All disputation makes the mind deaf; and when people are deaf, I am dumb.

Men have torn up the roads which led to Heaven, and which all the world followed; now we have to make our own ladders.

There are people who are virtuous only in a piece-meal way; virtue is a fabric from which they never make themselves a whole garment.

Our life is woven wind.

Professional critics are incapable of distinguishing and appreciating either diamonds in the rough or gold in bars. They are traders, and in literature know only the coins that are current. Their critical lab has scales and weights, but neither crucible or touchstone.

A man who shows no defect is a fool or a hypocrite, whom we should mistrust. There are defects so bound to fine qualities that they announce them,--defects which it is well not to correct.

Good maxims are the germs of all excellence.