Books are the best of things, well used; abused, among the worst...They are for nothing but to inspire.

All our progress is an unfolding, like the vegetable bud. You have first an instinct, then an opinion, then a knowledge, as the plant has root, bud, and fruit. Trust the instinct to the end, though you can render no reason. It is vain to hurry it. By trusting it to the end it shall ripen into truth, and you shall know why you believe.

Let the soul be assured that somewhere in the universe it should rejoin its friend, and it would be content and cheerful alone for a thousand years.

Manners are the happy ways of doing things.

We write from aspiration and antagonism, as well as from experience. We paint those qualities which we do not posses.

Conversation is an art in which a man has all mankind for his competitors, for it is that which all are practising every day while they live.

And truly it demands something godlike in him who cast off the common motives of humanity and ventured to trust himself for a taskmaster.