We are accustomed to see men deride what they do not understand, and snarl at the good and beautiful because it lies beyond their sympathies

I do not know myself, and God forbid that I should.

One should not wish anyone disagreeable conditions of life; but for him who is involved in them by chance, they are touchstones of characters and of the most decisive value to man.

It is not doing the thing we like to do, but liking the thing we have to do, that makes life blessed.

We are pantheists as natural scientists, polytheists as poets, and monotheists as moral beings.

The finished man, you know, is difficult to please; a growing mind will ever show you gratitude. --Faust 1, lines 182-3

How happy he who can still hope to lift himself from this sea of error! What we know not, that we are anxious to possess, and cannot use what we know.