There is a gentle, but perfectly irresistible coercion in a habit of reading well directed, over the whole tenor of a man's character and conduct, which is not the less effectual because it works insensibly, and because it is really the last thing he dreams of.

The barrier has begun to yield.

Speculations apparently the most unprofitable have almost invariably been those from which the greatest practical applications have emanated.

The novel, in its best form, I regard as one of the most powerful engines of civilization ever invented.

Man is constituted as a speculative being; he contemplates the world, and the objects around him, not with a passive indifferent eye, but as a system disposed with order and design.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The stars are the land-marks of the universe.