The noblest service comes from nameless hands; and the best servant does his work unseen.

Liberty is often a heavy burden on a man. It involves the necessity for perpetual choice which is the kind of labor men have always dreaded.

A great man represents a great ganglion in the nerves of society, or to vary the figure, a strategic point in the campaign of history, and part of his greatness consists in his being there.

The root of joy, as of duty, is to put all one's powers towards some great end.

And silence, like a poultice, comes To heal the blows of sound.

The best of a book is not the thought which it contains, but the thought which it suggests; just as the charm of music dwells not in the tones but in the echoes of our hearts.

For my part I think it is a less evil that some criminals should escape, than that the government should play an ignoble part.