Wealth begins . . . in giving on all sides by tools and auxiliaries the greatest possible extension to our powers; as if it added feet and hands and eyes and blood. . . .

[Nature said] The sea shall disjoin the people [of England] from others, and knit them to a fierce nationality. It shall give them markets on every side. Long time I will keep them on their feet, by poverty, border-wars . . . seafaring . . .

Artists in each of the arts seek after and care for nothing but love.

The fate of the poor shepherd, who, blinded and lost in the snow-storm, perishes in a drift within a few feet of his cottage door, is an emblem of the state of man.

. . . if [writing] lift you from your feet with the great voice of eloquence, then the effect is to be wide, slow, permanent, over the minds of men; . . .

The ideas of things intellectually known pass into the substance of the intellect much more than do foods into the substance of the body.

Who can wonder at the attractiveness... of the bar, for our ambitious young men, when the highest bribes of society are at the feet of the successful orator?