Many a genius has been slow of growth. Oaks that flourish for a thousand years do not spring up into beauty like a reed.
To some men popularity is always suspicious. Enjoying none themselves, they are prone to suspect the validity of those attainments which command it.
We must never assume that which is incapable of proof.
A man may be buoyed up by the efflation of his wild desires to brave any imaginable peril; but he cannot calmly see one he loves braving the same peril; simply because he cannot feel within turn that which prompts another. He sees the danger, and feels not the power that is to overcome it.
Murder, like talent, seems occasionally to run in families.
Among the many strange servilities mistaken for pieties, one of the least lovely is that which hopes to flatter God by despising the world, and vilifying human nature.
The great desire of this age is for a Doctrine which may serve to condense our knowledge, guide our researches, and shape our lives, so that Conduct may really be the consequence of Belief.
No deeply-rooted tendency was ever extirpated by adverse argument. Not having originally been founded on argument, it cannot be destroyed by logic.
Shakespeare is a good raft whereon to float securely down the stream of time; fasten yourself to that and your immortality is safe.
The moral nature of man is more sacred in my eyes than his intellectual nature. I know they cannot be divorced — that without intelligence we should be Brutes — but it is the tendency of our gaping, wondering dispositions to give pre-eminence to those faculties which most astonish us. Strength of character seldom, if ever, astonishes; goodness, lovingness, and quiet self-sacrifice, are worth all the talents in the world.