No love can be bound by oath or covenant to secure it against a higher love.

Every man has a vocation. The talent is the call.

The orator is thereby an orator that keeps his feet ever on a fact.

Circumstance does not make the man. Circumstance reveals man to himself.

For a great nature, it is a happiness to escape a religious training; religion of character is so apt to be invaded.

Oxford is a little aristocracy in itself, numerous and dignified enough to rank with other estates in the realm; and where fame and secular promotion are to be had for study, and in a direction which has the unanimous respect of all cultivated nations.

A friend, therefore, is a sort of paradox in nature. I who alone am, I who see nothing in nature whose existence I can affirm with equal evidence to my own, behold now the semblance of my being, in all its height, variety, and curiosity, reiterated in a foreign form; so that a friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.