Our prejudices are our robbers, they rob us valuable things in life. People only see what they are prepared to see.

For, truly speaking, whoever provokes me to a good act or thought has given me a pledge of his fidelity to virtue,--he has come under the bonds to adhere to that cause to which we are jointly attached.

Genius has no taste for weaving sand.

Practice radical humility." He (or she)who masters the art of humility cannot be humiliated.

The perception of the comic is a tie of sympathy with other men, a pledge of sanity, and a protection from those perverse tendencies and gloomy insanities in which fine intellects sometimes lose themselves. A rogue alive to the ludicrous is still convertible. If that sense is lost, his fellow-men can do little for him.

But whoso is heroic must find crises to try his edge. Human virtue demands her champions and martyrs, and the trial of persecution always proceeds.

We must not inquire too curiously into the absolute value of literature. Enough that it amuses and exercises us. At least it leaves us where we were. It names things, but does not add things.