There is no one who does not exaggerate. In conversation, men are encumbered with personality, and talk too much.

Enthusiasm is the leaping lightning, not to be measured by the horse-power of the understanding

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

Life is comic or pitiful as soon as the high ends of being fade out of sight, and man becomes near-sighted, and can only attend towhat addresses the senses.

The motive of science was the extension of man, on all sides, into Nature, till his hands should touch the stars, his eyes see through the earth, his ears understand the language of beast and bird, and the sense of the wind; and, through his sympathy, heaven and earth should talk with him. But that is not our science.

You cannot hide any secret. If the artist succor his flagging spirits by opium or wine, his work will characterize itself as the effect of opium or wine. If you make a picture or a statue, it sets the beholder in that state of mind you had when you made it. If you spend for show, on building, or gardening, or on pictures, or on equipages, it will so appear. We are all physiognomists and penetrators of character, and things themselves are detective.

Consideration is the soil in which wisdom may be expected to grow, and strength be given to every up-springing plant of duty.