At the bottom there is no perfect history; there is none such conceivable. All past centuries have rotted down, and gone confusedly dumb and quiet.
If I say that Shakespeare is the greatest of intellects, I have said all concerning him. But there is more in Shakespeare’s intellect than we have yet seen. It is what I call an unconscious intellect; there is more virtue in it that he himself is aware of.
A word spoken in season, at the right moment; is the mother of ages.
Intellect is the soul of man, the only immortal part of him.
Parliament will train you to talk; and above all things to hear, with patience, unlimited quantities of foolish talk.
In the true Literary Man there is thus ever, acknowledged or not by the world, a sacredness: he is the light of the world; the world’s Priest; – guiding it, like a sacred Pillar of Fire, in its dark pilgrimage through the waste of Time.
Before philosophy can teach by Experience, the Philosophy has to be in readiness, the Experience must be gathered and intelligibly recorded.
He who first shortened the labor of Copyists by device of Movable Types was disbanding hired armies and cashiering most Kings and Senates, and creating a whole new Democratic world: he had invented the Art of printing.
Skepticism means, not intellectual doubt alone, but moral doubt.
Speak not at all, in any wise, till you have somewhat to speak; care not for the reward of your speaking, but simply and with undivided mind for the truth of your speaking.
He is wise who can instruct us and assist us in the business of virtuous living.
Nay, in every epoch of the world, the great event, parent of all others, is it not the arrival of a Thinker in the world?
Midas-eared Mammonism, double-barrelled Dilettantism, and their thousand adjuncts and corollaries, are not the Law by which God Almighty has appointed this His universe to go.
Providence has given to the French the empire of the land, to the English that of the sea, to the Germans that of – the air!
We do everything by custom, even believe by it; our very axioms, let us boast of free-thinking as we may, are oftenest simply such beliefs as we have never heard questioned.
Little other than a red tape Talking-machine, and unhappy Bag of Parliamentary Eloquence.
The graceful minuet-dance of fancy must give place to the toilsome, thorny pilgrimage of understanding. On the transition from the age of romance to that of science.
Statistics is a science which ought to be honourable, the basis of many most important sciences; but it is not to be carried on by steam, this science, any more than others are; a wise head is requisite for carrying it on.
Not what you possess but what you do with what you have, determines your true worth.
Nature is the time-vesture of God that reveals Him to the wise, and hides him from the foolish.
High Air-castles are cunningly built of Words, the Words well bedded also in good Logic-mortar; wherein, however, no Knowledge will come to lodge.