An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory.

A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.

Out of sleeping a waking, Out of waking a sleep.

Talent is commonly developed at the expense of character.

Truth has not single victories; all things are its organs,--not only dust and stones, but errors and lies.

A man is reputed to have thought and eloquence; he cannot, for all that, say a word to his cousin or his uncle. They accuse his silence with as much reason as they would blame the insignificance of a dial in the shade. In the sun it will mark the hour. Among those who enjoy his thought, he will regain his tongue.

When we are young, we spend much time and pains in filling our note-books with all definitions of Religion, Love, Poetry, Politics, Art, in the hope that, in the course of a few years, we shall have condensed into our encyclopaedia the net value of all the theories at which the world has yet arrived. But year after year our tables get no completeness, and at last we discover that our curve is a parabola, whose arcs will never meet.