Human beings cannot endure the geological chaos they encounter under the soil of their own gardens.

I have no expectation that any man will read history aright who thinks that what was done in a remote age, by men whose names have resounded far, has any deeper sense than what he is doing today.

Religion is as effectively destroyed by bigotry as by indifference.

Every man supposes himself not to be fully understood or appreciated.

When at last in a race a new principle appears, an idea--that conserves it; ideas only save races.

Consider what you have in the smallest well-chosen library-a company of the wisest and wittiest men which can be plucked out of all civilized countries in a thousand years. The men themselves were then hidden and inaccessible. They were solitary, impatient of interruption, and fenced by etiquette. But now they are immortal, and the thought they did not reveal, even to their bosom friends, is here written out in transparent words of light to us, who are strangers of another age.

All writing comes by the grace of God.