“Secrecy is the element of all goodness; even virtue, even beauty is mysterious.”

Just in the ratio knowledge increases, faith decreases.

The soul gives unity to what it looks at with love.

Do nothing, only keep agitating, debating; and things will destroy themselves.

If you do not wish a man to do a thing, you had better get him to talk about it; for the more men talk, the more likely they are to do nothing else.

What we become depends on what we read after all of the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is a collection of books.

Music is well said to be the speech of angels.

Our grand business undoubtedly is, not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.

Experience is the best of school masters, only the school fees are heavy.

A great man shows his greatness by the way he treats little men.

You can make even a parrot into a learned political economist – all he must learn are the two words “supply” and “demand.”

Foolish men imagine that because judgment for an evil thing is delayed, there is no justice; but only accident here below. Judgment for an evil thing is many times delayed some day or two, some century or two, but it is sure as life, it is sure as death.

Of all God’s creatures, Man alone is poor.

Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do that with all thy might and leave the issues calmly to God.

No iron chain, or outward force of any kind, could ever compel the soul of man to believe or to disbelieve: it is his own indefeasible light, that judgment of his; he will reign and believe there by the grace of God alone!

Every noble work is at first impossible.

No man lives without jostling and being jostled; in all ways he has to elbow himself through the world, giving and receiving offence.