There are natures that go to the streams of life in great cities as the hart goes to the water brooks.

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.

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.

Conversation is interesting in proportion to the originality of the central ideas which serve as pivots and the fitness of the little facts and observations which are contributed by the talkers.

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

Avowed work, even when uncongenial, is far less trying to patience than feigned pleasure.

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