People have prejudices against a nation in which they have no acquaintances.

You may have a cat in the room with you without anxiety about anything except eatables. The presence of a cat is positively soothing to a student.

We need society, and we need solitude also, as we need summer and winter, day and night, exercise and rest.

Have you ever observed that we pay much more attention to a wise passage when it is quoted, than when we read it in the original author?

Of all intellectual friendships, none are so beautiful as those which subsist between old and ripe men and their younger brethren in science or literature or art. It is, by these private friendships, even more than by public performance, that the tradition of sound thinking and great doing is perpetuated from age to age.

Culture is like wealth; it makes us more ourselves, it enables us to express ourselves

What delights us in the spring is more a sensation than an appearance, more a hope than any visible reality. There is something in the softness of the air, in the lengthening of the days, in the very sounds and odors of the sweet time, that caresses us and consoles us after the rigorous weeks of winter.