In books lies the soul of the whole Past Time; the articulate audible voice of the Past, when the body and material substance of it has altogether vanished like a dream.

Custom doth make dotards of us all.

There is no life of a man, faithfully recorded, but is a heroic poem of its sort, rhymed or unrhymed.

The nobleness of silence. The highest melody dwells only in silence,--the sphere melody, the melody of health.

Fire is the best of servants, but what a master!

These Arabs, the man Mahomet, and that one century, - is it not as if a spark had fallen, one spark, on a world of what proves explosive powder, blazes heaven-high from Delhi to Granada! I said, the Great man was always as lightning out of Heaven; the rest of men waited for him like fuel, and then they too would flame.

Speech that leads not to action, still more that hinders it, is a nuisance on the earth.