Old gold has a civilizing virtue which new gold must grow old to be capable of secreting.

The discontent with the existing order of things pervaded the atmosphere, wherever the conditions were favorable, long before Columbus, seeking the back door of Asia, found himself knocking at the front door of America.

And what is so rare as a day in June? Then, if ever, come perfect days.

If the devil take a less hateful shape to us than to our fathers, he is as busy with us as with them.

Men have their intellectual ancestry, and the likeness of some one of them is forever unexpectedly flashing out in the features of a descendant, it may be after a gap of several centuries. In the parliament of the present every man represents a constituency of the past.

He who keeps his faith only, cannot be discrowned.

The only conclusive evidence of a man's sincerity is that he gives himself for a principle. Words, money, all things else, are comparatively easy to give away; but when a man makes a gift of his daily life and practice, it is plain that the truth, whatever it may be, has taken possession of him.