A weed is a plant whose virtue is not yet known.

By going one step further back in thought, discordant opinions are reconciled by being seen to be two extremes of one principle, and we can never go so far back as to preclude a still higher vision.

We are too civil to books. For a few golden sentences we will turn over and actually read a volume of four or five hundred pages.

A man must thank his defects, and stand in some terror of his talents. A transcendent talent draws so largely on his forces as tolame him; a defect pays him revenues on the other side.

I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.

He is the rich man in whom the people are rich, and he is the poor man in whom the people are poor; and how to give access to themasterpieces of art and nature, is the problem of civilization.

Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet.