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

We are too civil to books. For a few golden sentences we will turn over and actually read a volume of four or five hundred pages.

Men are better than this theology.

Don't waste life in doubts and fears; spend yourself on the work before you, well assured that the right performance of this hour's duties will be the best preparation for the hours and ages that will follow it.

The land is the appointed remedy for whatever is false and fantastic in our culture...food for our mind, as well as our body.

Public opinion, I am sorry to say, will bear a great deal of nonsense. There is scarcely any absurdity so gross, whether in religion, politics, science or manners, which it will not bear.

What goes on around you... compares little with what goes on inside you.