A cultivated man, wise to know and bold to perform, is the end to which nature works.

Of all wit's uses, the main one is to live well with who has none.

I give you joy of your free and brave thought. I have great joy in it. I find incomparable things said incomparably well, as they must be. I find the courage of treatment which so delights us, and which large perception only can inspire.

History is the action and reaction of these two, nature and thought.

He presents me with what is always an acceptable gift who brings me news of a great thought before unknown. He enriches me without impoverishing himself.

Criticism should not be querulous and wasting, all knife and root-puller, but guiding, instructive, inspiring, a south wind, not an east wind.

Courage consists in equality to the problem before us.