Don't trust children with edge tools. Don't trust man, great God, with more power than he has until he has learned to use that little better. What a hell we should make of the world if we could do what we would!

The religion which is to guide and fulfill the present and coming ages, whatever else it be, must be intellectual. The scientific mind must have a faith which is science.

Every sentence spoken by Napoleon, and every line of his writing, deserves reading, as it is the sense of France.

We must be lovers, and at once the impossible becomes possible.

Is not prayer also a study of truth,--a sally of the soul into the unfound infinite? No man ever prayed heartily, without learningsomething. But when a faithful thinker, resolute to detach every object from personal relations, and see it in the light of thought, shall, at the same time, kindle science with the fire of the holiest affections, then will God go forth anew into creation.

I wish that friendship should have feet, as well as eyes and eloquence. It must plant itself on the ground, before it vaults overthe moon. I wish it to be a little of a citizen, before it is quite a cherub.

The adventitious beauty of poetry may be felt in the greater delight with a verse given in a happy quotation than in the poem.