Skepticism, as I said, is not intellectual only; it is moral also; a chronic atrophy and disease of the whole soul. A man lives by believing something; not by debating and arguing about many things. A sad case for him when all that he can manage to believe is something he can button in his pocket, and with one or the other organ eat and digest! Lower than that he will not get.

Do the duty which lies nearest to you, the second duty will then become clearer.

Instead of saying that man is the creature of circumstance, it would be nearer the mark to say that man is the architect of circumstance.

The true eye for talent presupposes the true reverence for it.

The true university of these days is a collection of books.

Philosophy dwells aloft in the Temple of Science, the divinity of its inmost shrine; her dictates descend among men, but she herself descends not : whoso would behold her must climb with long and laborious effort, nay, still linger in the forecourt, till manifold trial have proved him worthy of admission into the interior solemnities.

There is a great discovery still to be made in literature, that of paying literary men by the quantity they do not write.