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.

I wonder how it is that so cheerful-looking a tree as the willow should ever have become associated with ideas of sadness.

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.

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.

Few of us have been so exceptionally unfortunate as not to find, in our own age, some experienced friend who has helped us by precious counsel, never to be forgotten. We cannot render it in kind, but perhaps in the fulness of time it may become our noblest duty to aid another as we have ourselves been aided, and to transmit to him an invaluable treasure, the tradition of the intellectual life.

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

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