Daily life is more instructive than the most effective book.

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.

National literature does not mean much these days; now is the age of world literature, and every one must contribute to hasten thearrival of that age.

There is nothing in life so irrational, that good sense and chance may not set it to rights; nothing so rational, that folly and chance may not utterly confound it.

A great scholar is seldom a great philosopher.

He who does not know foreign languages does not know anything about his own.

The follies of the wise man are known to himself, but hidden from the world.