We have great power to see the truth when the truth is all we wish to see; but what is easier than to credit what we desire? and can a man deceive anyone so easily as himself?

It is worth thought what kind of mind or condition or disposition is open to flattery; for poison would not be spread if the rats ate it not.

Like all passions, anger has degrees, ascending from slight vexation through deepening clouds to rage, and finally to fury, which is a black and horrible tempest. In its mid-region, where it is neither too little to be motive nor too furious to be ungovernable, it has usefulness. For all feeling is as fuel, and where there is none life has no fire, and then no flame of ascent.

Democracy has become, unless I mistake, a kind of test or shibboleth, by which we try men and measures; and this is the same as to say that it is merely a word which is powerful with us, and not the wide and true notion of what the word means. But we must define the true import of words, and not be slaves to syllables; for democracy in form is not necessarily people-power in fact, but power perhaps of a few, who cajole the many and so lead and use the people for their own ends.

when a great war has cut off the young men of a nation it never can be told thereafter what losses of scholars, poets, thinkers and great designers the country and the world have suffered.

Meditation is first quietness. We live in a great din. It is well to see (for who sees it not will have but narrow sympathies and understand little that occurs around him) that the noise is often a noble uproar, "deep calling unto deep," the clamor of wonderful machinery, of great labors, of human struggles, of heroes' voices. But storms, though grand, must sink if the sea is to show the stars.

Meditation ... must be power of will and strength of attention, being like a flight to great heights wherein wings must be plied hard though joyfully.