Stern accuracy in inquiring, bold imagination in describing, these are the cogs on which history soars or flutters and wobbles.

Eternity looks grander and kinder if time grow meaner and more hostile.

A fundamental mistake to call vehemence and rigidity strength! A man is not strong who takes convulsion-fits; though six men cannot hold him then. He that can walk under the heaviest weight without staggering, he is the strong man . . . A man who cannot hold his peace, till the time come for speaking and acting, is no right man.

The block of granite which was an obstacle in the pathway of the weak, became a stepping-stone in the pathway of the strong.

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

If an eloquent speaker speak not the truth, is there a more horrid kind of object in creation?

Without oblivion, there is no remembrance possible. When both oblivion and memory are wise, when the general soul of man is clear, melodious, true, there may come a modern Iliad as memorial of the Past.