History is the essence of innumerable biographies.

It is the feeling of injustice that is insupportable to all men.

No man at bottom means injustice; it is always for some obscure distorted image of a right that he contends: an obscure image diffracted, exaggerated, in the wonderfulest way by natural dimness and selfishness; getting tenfold more diffracted by exasperation of contest, till at length it become all but irrecognis-able.

It is the heart always that sees, before the head can see.

For all right judgment of any man or thing it is useful, nay, essential, to see his good qualities before pronouncing on his bad.

No man who has once heartily and wholly laughed can be altogether irreclaimably bad.

The man who cannot laugh is not only fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils; but his whole life is already a treason and a stratagem.

The true university of these days is a collection of books.

Oblivion is the dark page, whereon Memory writes her light-beam characters, and makes them legible; were it all light, nothing could be read there, any more than if it were all darkness.

Music is well said to be the speech of angels; in fact, nothing among the utterances allowed to man is felt to be so divine. It brings us near to the Infinite.