The wave of evil washes all our institutions alike.

If thought makes free, so does the moral sentiment. The mixtures of spiritual chemistry refuse to be analyzed.

Every sentence spoken by Napoleon, and every line of his writing, deserves reading, as it is the sense of France.

Good writing is a kind of skating which carries off the performer where he would not go, and is only right admirable when to all its beauty and speed a subserviency to the will, like that of walking, is added.

If a man is at heart just, then in so far is he God; the safety of God, the immortality of God, the majesty of God do enter into that man with justice.

Every really able man, in whatever direction he works - a man of large affairs, an inventor, a statesman, an orator, a poet, a painter - if you talk sincerely with him, considers his work, however much admired, as far short of what it should be. What is this Better, this flying Ideal, but the perpetual promise of his Creator?

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