A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.

Only be admonished by what you already see, not to strike leagues of friendship with cheap persons, where no friendship can be. Our impatience betrays us into rash and foolish alliances which no God attends.

Cowardice shuts the eyes till the sky is not larger than a calf-skin: shuts the eyes so that we cannot see the horse that is running away with us; worse, shuts the eyes of the mind and chills the heart.

The finest poetry was first experience.

We know who is benevolent, by quite other means than the amount of subscriptions to soup-societies. It is only low merits that canbe enumerated.

Presently we pass to some other object which rounds itself into a whole as did the first; for example, a well-laid garden; and nothing seems worth doing but the laying~out of gardens.

The student is to read history actively and not passively; to esteem his own life the text, and books the commentary. Thus compelled, the muse of history will utter oracles as never to those who do not respect themselves.