Scholarship is to be created not by compulsion, but by awakening a pure interest in knowledge.

If the individuals who compose the purest circles of aristocracy in Europe, the guarded blood of centuries, should pass in review,in such manner as that we could, at leisure, and critically inspect their behavior, we might find no gentleman, and no lady; for, although excellent specimens of courtesy and high-breeding would gratify us in the assemblage, in the particulars, we should detect offence. Because, elegance comes of no breeding, but of birth.

Life wastes itself whilst we are preparing to live.

Works of the intellect are great only by comparison with each other.

When the night is darkest, the stars come out.

It is the property of the religious spirit to be the most refining of all influences. No external advantages, no culture of the tastes, no habit of command, no association with the elegant, or even depth of affection, can bestow that delicacy and that grandeur of bearing which belong only to the mind accustomed to celestial conversation,--all else is but gilt and cosmetics, beside this, as expressed in every look and gesture.

The bitterest tragic element in life to be derived from an intellectual source is the belief in a brute Fate or Destiny.