What interest, zest, or excitement can there be in achieving the right way, unless we are enabled to feel that the wrong way is also a possible and a natural way, nay, more, a menacing and an imminent way? And what sense can there be in condemning ourselves for taking the wrong way, unless we need have done nothing of the sort, unless the right way was open to us as well? I cannot understand the willingness to act, no matter how we feel, without the belief that acts are really good and bad.

You must bring out of each word its practical cash-value, set it at work within the stream of your experience.

We have to live today by what truth we can get today and be ready tomorrow to call it falsehood.

It is only in the lonely emergencies of life that our creed is tested: then routine maxims fail, and we fall back on our gods.

It is astonishing how many mental operations we can explain when we have once grasped the principles of association

Hardly ever can a youth transferred to the society of his betters unlearn the nasality and other vices of speech bred in him by the associations of his growing years. Hardly ever, indeed, no matter how much money there be in his pocket, can he ever learn to dress like a gentleman-born. The merchants offer their wares as eagerly to him as to the veriest swell, but he simply cannot buy the right things.

Organization and method mean much, but contagious human characters mean more in a university.