All the great speakers were bad speakers at first.

Though we love goodness and not stealing, yet also we love freedom and not preaching.

Do not fear to put novels into the hands of young people as an occasional holiday experiment, but above all, good poetry in all kinds,--epic, tragedy, lyric. If we can touch the imagination, we serve them; they will never forget it.

The reason why men do not obey us, is because they see the mud at the bottom of our eye.

Machinery is aggressive. The weaver becomes a web, the machinist a machine. If you do not use the tools, they use you. All tools are in one sense edge-tools, and dangerous.

A few strong instincts and a few plain rules suffice us

The genius is a genius by the first look he casts on any object. Is his eye creative? Does he not rest in angles and colors, but beholds the design,--he will presently undervalue the actual object.