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

Society is, and must be, based upon appearances, and not upon the deepest appearances, and not realities.

High culture always isolates, always drives men out of their class, and makes it more difficult for them to share naturally and easily the common class-life around them. They seek the few companions who can understand them, and when these are not to be had within a traversable distance, they sit and work alone.

Never be afraid of What is good; the good is always the road to what is true.

All that we have read and learned, all that has occupied and interested us in the thoughts and deeds of men abler or wiser than ourselves, constitutes at last a spiritual society of which we can never be deprived, for it rests in the heart and soul of the man who has acquired it.

The art of reading is to skip judiciously. Whole libraries may be skipped in these days, when we have the results of them in our modern culture without going over the ground again.

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