Compromise makes a good umbrella, but a poor roof.

Fastidiousness is only another word for egotism; and all men who know not where to look for truth save in the narrow well of self will find their own image at the bottom, and mistake it for what they are seeking.

It is the vain endeavor to make ourselves what we are not that has strewn history with so many broken purposes and lives left in the rough.

He mastered whatever was not worth the knowing.

There are two kinds of genius. The first and highest may be said to speak out of the eternal to the present, and must compel its age to understand it; the second understands its age, and tells it what it wishes to be told.

Over our manhood bend the skies; Against our fallen and traitor lives The great winds utter prophecies; With our faint hearts the mountain strives, Its arms outstretched, the druid wood Waits with its benedicite And to our age’s drowsy blood Still shouts the inspiring sea.

No sincere desire of doing good need make an enemy of a single human being; that philanthropy has surely a flaw in it which cannot sympathize with the oppressor equally as with the oppressed.