Who can . . . guess how much industry and providence and affection we have caught from the pantomime of brutes?

Spoons and skimmers you can be undistinguishably together; but vases and statues require each a pedestal for itself.

What is addressed to us for contemplation does not threaten us, but makes us intellectual beings.

I hate to be defended in a newspaper. As long as all that is said is said against me, I feel a certain assurance of success. But as soon as honeyed words of praise are spoken for me, I feel as one that lies unprotected before his enemies.

In the history of the individual is always an account of his condition, and he knows himself to be a party to his present estate.

The life of man is a self-evolving circle, which, from a ring imperceptibly small, rushes on all sides outwards to new and largercircles, and that without end.

Men do not believe in the power of education. We do not think we can speak to divine sentiments in man, and we do not try. We renounce all high aims.