I feel some unwillingness to quit the remembrance of the past. With all the hope of the new I feel that we are leaving the old.

Great geniuses have the shortest biographies.

Why need I volumes, if one word suffice?

Human society is made up of partialities. Each citizen has an interest and a view of his own, which, if followed out to the extreme, would leave no room for any other citizen.

What school, college, or lecture bring men depends on what men bring to carry it home in.

Every young man is prone to be misled by the suggestions of his own ill-founded ambition which he mistakes for the promptings of asecret genius, and thence dreams of unrivaled greatness.

Passion, though a bad regulator, is a powerful spring. Any absorbing passion has the effect to deliver from the little coils and cares of every day: 'tis the heat which sets our human atoms spinning, overcomes the friction of crossing thresholds, and first addresses in society, and gives us a good start and speed, easy to continue, when once it is begun.