Numbers serve to discipline rhetoric. Without them it is too easy to follow flights of fancy, to ignore the world as it is and to remold it nearer the heart's desire.

No hope so bright but is the beginning of its own fulfilment.

Every really able man, in whatever direction he works - a man of large affairs, an inventor, a statesman, an orator, a poet, a painter - if you talk sincerely with him, considers his work, however much admired, as far short of what it should be. What is this Better, this flying Ideal, but the perpetual promise of his Creator?

Sleep takes off the costume of circumstance, arms us with terrible freedom, so that every will rushes to a deed.

The eye is easily frightened.

Light is the first of painters. There is no object so foul that intense light will not make it beautiful.

The highest end of government is the culture of men.