The mere understanding, however useful and indispensable, is the meanest faculty in the human mind and the most to be distrusted.

No man will ever unfold the capacities of his own intellect who does not at least checker his life with solitude.

If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination.

No progressive knowledge will ever medicine that dread misgiving of a mysterious and pathless power given to words of a certain import.

All parts of knowledge have their origin in metaphysics, and finally, perhaps, revolve into it.

Books, we are told, propose to instruct or to amuse. Indeed! A true antithesis to knowledge, in this case, is not pleasure, but power. All that is literature seeks to communicate power; all that is not literature, to communicate knowledge.

The public is a bad guesser.