If goodness were only a theory, it were a pity it should be lost to the world. There are a number of things, the idea of which is a clear gain to the mind. Let people, for instance, rail at friendship, genius, freedom, as long as they will -the very names of these despised qualities are better than anything else that could be substituted for them, and embalm even the most envenomed satire against them.

The love of fame is almost another name for the love of excellence; or it is the ambition to attain the highest excellence, sanctioned by the highest authority, that of time.

A scholar is like a book written in a dead language. It is not every one that can read in it.

Books are a world in themselves, it is true; but they are not the only world. The world itself is a volume larger than all the libraries in it.

The measure of any man's virtue is what he would do, if he had neither the laws nor public opinion, nor even his own prejudices, to control him.

As we are poetical in our natures, so we delight in fable.

The admiration of power in others is as common to man as the love of it in himself; the one makes him a tyrant, the other a slave.