People disparage knowing and the intellectual life, and urge doing. I am content with knowing, if only I could know.

A scholar is a candle which the love and desire of all men will light.

Coffee is good for talent, but genius wants prayer.

The thief steals from himself. The swindler swindles himself. For the real price is knowledge and virtue, whereof wealth and credit are signs. These signs, like paper money, may be counterfeited or stolen, but that which they represent, namely, knowledge and virtue, cannot be counterfeited or stolen.

So shall we come to look at the world with new eyes. It shall answer the endless inquiry of the intellect, — What is truth? and of the affections, — What is good? by yielding itself passive to the educated Will. ... Build, therefore, your own world. As fast as you conform your life to the pure idea in your mind, that will unfold its great proportions. A correspondent revolution in things will attend the influx of the spirit.

When friendships are real, they are not glass threads or frost-work , but the solidest thing we know.

A party is perpetually corrupted by personality.