In trying to teach children a great deal in a short time, they are treated not as though the race they were to run was for life, but simply a three-mile heat.

The pulpit only "teaches" to be honest; the market-place "trains" to overreaching and fraud; and teaching has not a tithe of the efficiency of training. Christ never wrote a tract, but He went about doing good.

One thing I certainly never was made for, and that is to put principles on and off at the dictation of a party, as a lackey changes his livery at his master's command.

Ignorance breeds monsters to fill up the vacancies of the soul that are unoccupied by the verities of knowledge.

Jails and prisons are the complement of schools; so many less as you have of the latter, so many more must you have of the former.

Astronomy is one of the sublimest fields of human investigation. The mind that grasps its facts and principles receives something of the enlargement and grandeur belonging to the science itself. It is a quickener of devotion.

If an idiot were to tell you the same story every day for a year, you would end by believing it.