The essence of greatness is the perception that virtue is enough.

For, though the origin of most of our words is forgotten, each word was at first a stroke of genius, and obtained currency, because for the moment it symbolized the world to the first speaker and to the hearer. The etymologist finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant picture.

Talent for talent's sake is a bauble and a show. Talent working with joy in the cause of universal truth lifts the possessor to new power as a benefactor.

Courage is temperamental, scientific, ideal.

Talent alone cannot make a writer. There must be a man behind the book; a personality which, by birth and quality, is pledged to the doctrines there set forth, and which exists to see and state things so, and not otherwise.

The antidote to this abuse of formal Government, is, the influence of private character, the growth of the Individual.

The wise man always throws himself on the side of his assailants. It is more his interest than it is theirs to find his weak point.