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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

Unless a man works he cannot find out what he is able to do.

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