The book, the college, the school of art, the institution of any kind, stop with some past utterance of genius. . . . They look backward and not forward. But genius looks forward: the eyes of man are set in his forehead, not in his hindhead: man hopes: genius creates. Whatever talents may be, if the man create not, the pure efflux of the Deity is not his; - cinders and smoke there may be, but not yet flame.

Give no bounties: make equal laws: secure life and prosperity and you need not give alms.

Thought and knowledge are natures in which apparatus and pretension avail nothing. Gowns, and pecuniary foundations, though of towns of gold, can never countervail the least sentence or syllable of wit. Forget this, and out American colleges will recede in their public importance whilst they grow richer every year.

It all begins when the soul would have its way with you.

Some people are born very far from home.

The true test of civilization is not the census, nor the size of cities, nor the crops - no, but the kind of man the country turns out.

Wherever there is failure, there is some giddiness, some superstition about luck, some step omitted, which, Nature never pardons.