I believe it is the conviction of the purest men, that the net amount of man and man does not much vary. Each is incomparably superior to his companion in some faculty. His want of skill in other directions, has added to his fitness for his own work.

You must treat the days respectfully, you must be a day yourself, and not interrogate it like a college professor.

The scholar is that man who must take up into himself all the ability of the time, all the contributions of the past, all the hopes of the future. He must be an university of knowledges.

The experience of each new age requires a new confession, and the world seems always waiting for its poet

Men love to wonder, and that is the seed of science.

The hand that rounded Peter's dome, And groined the aisles of Christian Rome, Wrought in a sad sincerity; Himself from God he could not free; He builded better than he knew: The conscious stone to beauty grew.

It is doubtless a vice to turn one's eyes inward too much, but I am my own comedy and tragedy.