The mind conceives with pain, but it brings forth with delight.

Every modulated sound is not a song, and every voice that executes a beautiful air does not sing. Singing should enchant. But to produce this effect there must be a quality of soul and voice which is by no means common even with great singers.

The sound of the drum drives out thought; for that very reason it is the most military of instruments.

We live in an age in which superfluous ideas abound and essential ideas are lacking.

Mediocrity is excellence in the eyes of the mediocre.

The Bible is to religion what the Iliad is to poetry

The Bible remained for me a book of books, still divine - but divine in the sense that all great books are divine which teach men how to live righteously.