The virtue of the imagination is its reaching, by intuition and intensity, a more essential truth than is seen at the surface of things.

How long most people would look at the best book before they would give the price of a large turbot for it?

When we build, let us think that we build forever. Let it not be for present delight nor for our use alone. Let it be such work as our descendants will look upon with praise and thanksgiving in their hearts.

What do we, as a nation, care about books? How much do you think we spend altogether on our libraries, public or private, as compared with what we spend on our horses?

All men who have sense and feeling are being continually helped; they are taught by every person they meet, and enriched by everything that falls in their way. The greatest, is he who has been oftenest aided. Originality is the observing eye.

There are no such things as Flowers there are only gladdened Leaves.

The art of nations is to be accumulative, just as science and history are; the work of living men not superseding, but building itself upon the work of the past.