No sooner does a great man depart, and leave his character as public property, than a crowd of little men rushes towards it. There they are gathered together, blinking up to it with such vision as they have, scanning it from afar, hovering round it this way and that, each cunningly endeavoring, by all arts, to catch some reflex of it in the little mirror of himself.

No man lives without jostling and being jostled; in all ways he has to elbow himself through the world, giving and receiving offence.

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

Silence is the eternal duty of man.

Laughter is the cipher key wherewith we decipher the whole man

The world is an old woman, and mistakes any gilt farthing for a gold coin; whereby being often cheated, she will thenceforth trust nothing but the common copper.

In no time whatever can small critics entirely eradicate out of living men's hearts a certain altogether peculiar collar reverence for Great Men--genuine admiration, loyalty, adora-tion.