We do what we must, and call it by the best names we can, and would fain have the praise of having intended the result which ensues.

The most active lives have so much routine as to preclude progress almost equally with the most inactive.

Logic is the procession or proportionate unfolding of the intuition; but its virtue is as silent method; the moment it would appear as propositions, and have a separate value, it is worthless.

When a whole nation is roaring patriotism at the top of its voice, I am fain to explore the cleanness of its hands and the purity of its heart.

Never mind the ridicule, never mind the defeat: up again, old heart!-it seems to say,-there is victory yet for all justice; and the true romance which the world exists to realize, will be the transformation of genius into practical power.

The colleges, while they provide us with libraries, furnish no professors of books; and I think no chair is so much needed.

Every heroic act measures itself by its contempt of some external good. But it finds its own success at last, and then the prudent also extol.