The curiosity of an honorable mind willingly rests there, where the love of truth does not urge it farther onward, and the love of its neighbor bids it stop; in other words, it willingly stops at the point where the interests of truth do not beckon it onward, and charity cries, Halt!

Poetry is certainly something more than good sense, but it must be good sense, at all events, just as a palace is more than a house, but it must be a house, at least.

What is one man's gain is another's loss.

To believe and to understand are not diverse things, but the same things in different periods of growth.

Great old books of the great old authors are not in everybody's reach; and though it is better to know them thoroughly than to know them only here and there, yet it is a good work to give a little to those who have neither time nor means to get his own belief.

To carry feelings of childhood into the powers of adulthood, to combine the child's sense of wonder and novelty with the appearances which every day for years has rendered familiar, this is the character and privilege of genius, and one of the marks which distinguish it from talent.

The first duty of a wise advocate is to convince his opponents that he understands their arguments, and sympathies with their just feelings.