Of all the paths a man could strike into, there is, at any given moment, a best path .. A thing which, here and now, it were of all things wisest for him to do .. To find this path, and walk in it, is the one thing needful for him.

I grow daily to honour facts more and more, and theory less and less. A fact, it seems to me, is a great thing; a sentence printed, if not by God, then at least by the Devil.

Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves together.

If there be not a religious element in the relations of men, such relations are miserable and doomed to ruin.

Imagination is a poor matter when it has to part company with understanding.

Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves together; that at length they may emerge, full-formed and majestic, into the daylight of Life, which they are thenceforth to rule.

The three great elements of modern civilization, Gun powder, Printing, and the Protestant religion.