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.

In learning to know other things, and other minds, we become more intimately acquainted with ourselves, and are to ourselves better worth knowing.

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.

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

The only hope of preserving what is best, lies in the practice of an immense charity, a wide tolerance, a sincere respect for opinions that are not ours.

The one mistake which is committed habitually by people who have the gift of half-genius, is waiting for inspiration.

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.