I wish to say what I think and feel today, with the proviso that tomorrow perhaps I shall contradict it all.

Men are lenses through which we read our own minds.

Talent for talent's sake is a bauble and a show. Talent working with joy in the cause of universal truth lifts the possessor to new power as a benefactor.

And what greater calamity can fall upon a nation than the loss of worship.

Great men exist that there might be greater men.

Bonaparte knew but one merit, and rewarded in one and the same way the good soldier, the good astronomer, the good poet, the good player.

A song is no song unless the circumstance is free and fine. If a singer sing from a sense of duty or from seeing no way to escape,I had rather have none. Those only can sleep who do not care to sleep; and those only write or speak best who do not too much respect the writing or the speaking.