Against criticism a man can neither protest nor defend himself; he must act in spite of it, and then it will gradually yield to him.

As long as you don't practice it, this dying and becoming, You are only a dreary guest on this dark earth.

But the valid issue is the extent to which man knows how to form and master the material at his command.

It is commonly the personal character of a writer which gives him his public significance. It is not imparted by his genius. Napoleon said of Corneille, "Were he living I would make him a king;" but he did not read him. He read Racine, yet he said nothing of the kind of Racine.

Alas! how much there is in education, and in our social institutions, to prepare us and our children for insanity.

Woe to him who would ascribe something like reason to Chance, and make a religion of surrendering to it.

If we take people only as they are, then we make them worse; if we treat them as if they were what they should be, then we bring them to where they can be brought.