A powerful agent is the right word: it lights the reader's way and makes it plain.

The perfection of wisdom, and the end of true philosophy is to proportion our wants to our possessions, our ambitions to our capacities, we will then be a happy and a virtuous people.

My philological studies have satisfied me that a gifted person ought to learn English (barring spelling and pronouncing) in thirty hours, French in thirty days, and German in thirty years. It seems manifest, then, that the latter tongue ought to be trimmed down and repaired. If it is to remain as it is, it ought to be gently and reverently set aside among the dead languages, for only the dead have time to learn it.

Put no trust in the benefits to accrue from early rising, as set forth by the infatuated Franklin.

Supposing is good, but finding out is better.

Good decisions come from experience. Experience comes from making bad decisions.

No man has an appreciation so various that his judgment is good upon all varieties of literary work.