avarice is especially, I suppose, a disease of the imagination.

there is nothing so uncertain and slippery as fact.

I very much wish that some day or other you may have time to learn Greek, because that language is an idea. Even a little of it is like manure to the soil of the mind, and makes it bear finer flowers.

Much waste of words and of thought too would be avoided if disputants would always begin with a clear statement of the question, and not proceed to argue till they had agreed upon what it was that they were arguing about.

I have a strong opinion that a genuine love of books is one of the greatest blessings of life for man and woman.

I don't pretend to any exemption from the general lot of parental delusion-I mean that like most other parents I see my child through an atmosphere which illuminates, magnifies, and at the same time refines the object to a degree that amounts to a delusion.

Parents and children cannot be to each other, as husbands with wives and wives with husbands. Nature has separated them by an almost impassable barrier of time; the mind and the heart are in quite a different state at fifteen and forty.