Art is the employent of the powers of nature for an end.

When the land is cultivated entirely by the spade and no horses are kept, a cow is kept for every three acres of land.

In this age, the mere example of non-conformity, the mere refusal to bend the knee to custom, is itself a service. Precisely because the tyranny of opinion is such as to make eccentricity a reproach, it is desirable, in order to break through that tyranny, that people should be eccentric. Eccentricity has always abounded when and where strength of character has abounded; and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and moral courage which it contained. That so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of the time.

It would not be easy even for an unbeliever, to find a better translation of the rule of virtue from the abstract into the concrete, than to endeavor so to live that Christ would approve our life.

Any society which is not improving is deteriorating, and the more so the closer and more familiar it is. Even a really superior man almost always begins to deteriorate when he is habitually king of his company.

The most cogent reason for restricting the interference of government is the great evil of adding unnecessarily to its power.

The test of real and vigorous thinking, the thinking which ascertains truths instead of dreaming dreams, is successful application to practice.