Politics is a deleterious profession, like some poisonous handicrafts.

We pass for what we are.

No love can be bound by oath or covenant to secure it against a higher love.

For beauty is God's handwriting...A nd, thank God for it as a cup of His blessing.

Each man has his own vocation. The talent is the call. There is one direction in which all space is open to him. He has faculties silently inviting him thither to endless exertion. He is like a ship in the river; he runs against obstructions on every side but one; on that side all obstruction is taken away, and he sweeps serenely over a deepening channel into an infinite sea.

Society has really no graver interest than the well-being of the literary class.

[Gratitude is] the cheerfulness of wisdom.