Enthusiasm begets enthusiasm, eloquence produces conviction for the moment; but it is only by truth to Nature and the everlasting institutions of mankind that those abiding influences are won that enlarge from generation to generation.

The greater your real strength and power, the quieter it will be exercised.

Men's thoughts and opinions are in a great degree vassals of him who invents a new phrase or re-applies an old epithet. The thought or feeling a thousand times repeated becomes his at last who utters it best.

Reading enables us to see with the keenest eyes, to hear with the finest ears, and listen to the sweetest voices of all time.

Though old the thought and oft exprest, Tis his at last who says it best.

It is singular how impatient men are with overpraise of others, how patient of overpraise of themselves; and yet the one does them no injury, while the other may be their ruin.

It is curious for one who studies the action and reaction of national literature on each other, to see the humor of Swift and Sterne and Fielding, after filtering through Richter, reappear in Carlyle with a tinge of Germanism that makes it novel, alien, or even displeasing, as the case may be, to the English mind.