No one is willing to believe that adults too, like children, wander about this earth in a daze and, like children, do not know where they come from or where they are going, act as rarely as they do according to genuine motives, and are as thoroughly governed as they are by biscuits and cake and the rod.

Three things are to be looked to in a building: that it stand on the right spot; that it is securely founded; that it be successfully executed.

People are always talking about originality; but what do they mean? As soon as we are born, the world begins to work upon us; and this goes on to the end. And after all, what can we call our own, except energy, strength, and will? If I could give an account of all that I owe to great predecessors and contemporaries, there would be but a small balance in my favor.

Money lost, something lost. Honor lost, much lost. Courage lost, everything lost-better you were never born

Love can do much, but duty more.

It is a misfortune to pass at once from observation to conclusion, and to regard both as of equal value; but it befalls many a student.

The poet should seize the Particular, and he should, if there be anything sound in it, thus represent the Universal.