The more readily we admit the possibility of our own cherished convictions being mixed with error, the more vital and helpful whatever is right in them will become; and no error is so conclusively fatal as the idea that God will not allow us to err, though He has allowed all other men to do so.

The child who desires education will be bettered by it; the child who dislikes it disgraced.

Borrowers are nearly always ill-spenders, and it is with lent money that all evil is mainly done and all unjust war protracted.

It is a shallow criticism that would define poetry as confined to literary productions in rhyme and meter rhythm. The written poem is only poetry talking, and the statue, the picture, and the musical composition are poetry acting. Milton and Goethe, at their desks, were not more truly poets than Phidias with his chisel, Raphael at his easel, or deaf Beethoven bending over his piano, inventing and producing strains, which he himself could never hope to hear.

It is a matter of the simplest demonstration, that no man can be really appreciated but by his equal or superior.

Do not think of your faults, still less of other's faults; look for what is good and strong, and try to imitate it. Your faults will drop off, like dead leaves, when their time comes.

Modern education has devoted itself to the teaching of impudence, and then we complain that we can no longer control our mobs.