I can promise to be sincere, but I cannot promise to be impartial.

You acquire a language most readily in the country where it is spoken; you study mineralogy best among miners; and so with everything else.

There are three classes of readers; some enjoy without judgment; others judge without enjoyment; and some there are who judge while they enjoy, and enjoy while they judge. The latter class reproduces the work of art on which it is engaged. Its numbers are very small.

Man would not be the finest creature in the world if he were not too fine for it.

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.

Every man must form himself as a particular being, seeking, however, to attain that general idea of which all mankind are constituents.

Kindness is the golden thread that holds society together.