Man is emphatically a proselytizing creature.
Scarcely two hundred years back can Fame recollect articulately at all; and there she but maunders and mumbles.
We have not the love of greatness, but the love of the love of greatness.
A man must indeed be a hero to appear such in the eyes of his valet.
Histories are as perfect as the Historian is wise, and is gifted with an eye and a soul.
History: A distillation of rumor.
Be a pattern to others, and then all will go well; for as a whole city is affected by the licentious passions and vices of great men, so it is likewise reformed by their moderation.
Conclusive facts are inseparable from inconclusive except by a head that already understands and knows.
I call the book of Job, apart from all theories about it, one of the grandest things ever written with the pen.
We remove mountains, and make seas our smooth highway; nothing can resist us. We war with rude Nature; and, by our resistless engines, come off always victorious, and loaded with spoils.
The fine arts once divorcing themselves from truth are quite certain to fall mad, if they do not die.
The dust of controversy is merely the falsehood flying off.
What unknown seas of feeling lie in man, and will from time to time break through!
Cash-payment is not the sole nexus of man with man.
He that has done nothing has known nothing.
Experience is the best of school masters, only the school fees are heavy.
Pin thy faith to no man’s sleeve. Hast thou not two eyes of thy own?
Our very walking is an incessant falling; a falling and a catching of ourselves before we come actually to the pavement. It is emblematic of all things a man does.
Is there no God, then, but at best an absentee God, sitting idle, ever since the first Sabbath, at the outside of his Universe?
Men worship the shows of great men; the most disbelieve that there is any reality of great men to worship.