The best that we can do for one another is to exchange our thoughts freely; and that, after all, is about all.

We must have the real thing before we can have a science of a thing.

We cannot live on probabilities. The faith in which we can live bravely and die in peace must be a certainty, so far as it professes to be a faith at all, or it is nothing.

That which especially distinguishes a high order of man from a low order of man, that which constitutes human goodness, human nobleness, is surely not the degree of enlightenment with which men pursue their own advantage; but it is self-forgetfulness; it is self-sacrifice; it is the disregard of personal pleasure, personal indulgence, personal advantage, remote or present, because some other line of conduct is more right.

Instruction does not prevent wasted time or mistakes; and mistakes themselves are often the best teachers of all.

Every one of us ... knows better than he practices, and recognizes a better law than he obeys.

We live merely on the crust or rind of things.