What enriches language is its being handled and exploited by beautiful minds-not so much by making innovations as by expanding it through more vigorous and varied applications, by extending it and deploying it. It is not words that they contribute: what they do is enrich their words, deepen their meanings and tie down their usage; they teach it unaccustomed rhythms, prudently though and with ingenuity.

The great and glorious masterpiece of humanity is to know how to live with a purpose.

The shortest way to arrive at glory would be to do that for conscience which we do for glory.

Only the fools are certain and assured.

It is an injustice that an old, broken, half-dead father should enjoy alone, in a corner of his hearth, possessions that would suffice for the advancement and maintenance of many children.

Teach him a certain refinement in sorting out and selecting his arguments, with an affection for relevance and so for brevity. Above all let him be taught to throw down his arms and surrender to truth as soon as he perceives it, whether the truth is born at his rival's doing or within himself from some change in his ideas.

There is a huge gulf between the man who follows the conventions and laws of his country and the man who sets out to regiment them and to change them.