Shakespeare carries us to such a lofty strain of intelligent activity, as to suggest a wealth which beggars his own; and we then feel that the splendid works which he has created, and which in other hours we extol as a sort of self-existent poetry, take no stronger hold of real nature than the shadow of a passing traveller on the rock. The inspiration which uttered itself in Hamlet and Lear could utter things as good from day to day, for ever.

Railroad iron is a magician's rod, in its power to evoke the sleeping energies of land and water.

What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think.

The university must be retrospective. The gale that gives direction to the vanes on all its towers blows out of antiquity.

If there be any man who thinks the ruin of a race of men a small matter, compared with the last decoration and completions of hisown comfort,--who would not so much as part with his ice- cream, to save them from rapine and manacles, I think I must not hesitate to satisfy that man that also his cream and vanilla are safer and cheaper by placing the negro nation on a fair footing than by robbing them.

The public values the invention more than the inventor does. The inventor knows there is much more and better where this came from.

Happy will that house be in which the relations are formed from character; after the highest, and not after the lowest order; the house in which character marries, and not confusion and a miscellany of unavowable motives.