The simplicity of the universe is very different from the simplicity of a machine. The simplicity of nature is not that which may be easily read but is inexhaustible. The last analysis can no wise be made.

Man is priest, and scholar, and statesman, and producer, and soldier. In the divided or social state these functions are parcelled out to individuals, each of whom aims to do his stint of the joint work, whilst each other performs his.

Yet these uneasy pleasures and fine pains are for curiosity, and not for life.

Each age, it is found, must write its own books; or rather, each generation for the next succeeding.

Our civility, England determines the style of, inasmuch as England is the strongest of the family of existing nations, and as we are the expansion of that people. It is that of a trading nation; it is a shopkeeping civility. The English lord is a retired shopkeeper, and has the prejudices and timidities of that profession.

The Englishman who has lost his fortune is said to have died of a broken heart.

That which builds is better than that which is built.