He mastered whatever was not worth the knowing.

There are two kinds of weakness, that which breaks and that which bends.

All birds during the pairing season become more or less sentimental, and murmur soft nothings in a tone very unlike the grinding-organ repetition and loudness of their habitual song. The crow is very comical as a lover; and to hear him trying to soften his croak to the proper Saint-Preux standard has something the effect of a Mississippi boatman quoting Tennyson.

Have you ever rightly considered what the mere ability to read means? That it is the key which admits us to the whole world of thought and fancy and imagination? to the company of saint and sage, of the wisest and the wittiest at their wisest and wittiest moment? That it enables us to see with the keenest eyes, hear with the finest ears, and listen to the sweetest voices of all time? More than that, it annihilates time and space for us.

It was in making education not only common to all, but in some sense compulsory on all, that the destiny of the free republics of America was practically settled.

The very gnarliest and hardest of hearts has some musical strings in it; but they are tuned differently in every one of us.

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