One evening, when I was yet in my nurse's arms, I wanted to touch the tea urn, which was boiling merrily ... My nurse would have taken me away from the urn, but my mother said "Let him touch it." So I touched it - and that was my first lesson in the meaning of liberty.

I fear uniformity. You cannot manufacture great men any more than you can manufacture gold.

A thing is worth what it can do for you, not what you choose to pay for it.

That country is the richest which nourishes the greatest number of noble and happy human beings.

The secret of language is the secret of sympathy, and its full charm is possible only to the gentle

Say all you have to say in the fewest possible words, or your reader will be sure to skip them; and in the plainest possible words or he will certainly misunderstand them.

What is poetry? The suggestion, by the imagination, of noble grounds for the noble emotions.