If there's a job to be done, I always ask the busiest man in my parish to take it on and it gets done.

You may say, "I wish to send this ball so as to kill the lion crouching yonder, ready to spring upon me. My wishes are all right, and I hope Providence will direct the ball." Providence won't. You must do it; and if you do not, you are a dead man.

The soul without imagination is what an observatory would be without a telescope.

Education will not come of itself; it will never come unless you seek it; it will not come unless you take the first steps which lead to it; but, taking these steps, every man can acquire it.

A man ought to carry himself in the world as an orange tree would if it could walk up and down in the garden, swinging perfume from every little censer it holds up in the air.

No man is good for anything who has not some particle of obstinacy to use upon occasion.

A library is but the soul's burying ground. It is a land of shadows.