Modern science gives lectures on botany, to show there is no such thing as a flower; on humanity, to show there is no such thing as a man; and on theology, to show there is no such thing as a God. No such thing as a man, but only a mechanism, No such thing as a God, but only a series of forces.

To banish imperfection is to destroy expression, to check exertion, to paralyze vitality.

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

You may chisel a boy into shape, as you would a rock, or hammer him into it, if he be of a better kind, as you would a piece of bronze. But you cannot hammer a girl into anything. She grows as a flower does.

I believe that there is no test of greatness in periods, nations or men more sure than the development, among them or in them, of a noble grotesque, and no test of comparative smallness or limitation, of one kind or another, more sure than the absence of grotesque invention, or incapability of understanding it.

He is the greatest artist who has embodied, in the sum of his works, the greatest number of the greatest ideas.

Books are divided into two classes, the books of the hour and the books of all time.