"To cultivate the memory we should confide to it only what we understand and love: the rest is a useless burden; for simply to know by rote is not to know at all."

"We have no sympathy with those who are controlled by ideas and passions which we neither understand nor feel. Thus they who live to satisfy the appetites do not believe it possible to live in and for the soul."

"Exercise of body and exercise of mind are supplementary, and both may be made recreative and educative."

"We do not find it hard to bear with ourselves, though we are full of faults. Why then may we not learn to be tolerant of others?"

"Believe in no triumph which is won by the deadening of human faculty or the dwarfing of human life. Strive for truth and love, not for victory."

"A liberal education is that which aims to develop faculty without ulterior views of profession or other means of gaining a livelihood. It considers man an end in himself and not an instrument whereby something is to be wrought. Its ideal is human perfection."

"One may speak Latin and have but the mind of a peasant."

"Inferior thinking and writing will make a name for a man among inferior people, who in all ages and countries, are the majority."

"What a wise man knows seems so plain and simple to himself that he easily makes the mistake of thinking it to be so for others."

"In education, as in religion and love, compulsion thwarts the purpose for which it is employed."

"Where it is the chief aim to teach many things, little education is given or received."

"The aim of education is to strengthen and multiply the powers and activities of the mind rather than to increase its possessions."

"We shrink from the contemplation of our dead bodies, forgetting that when dead they are no longer ours, and concern us as little as the hairs that have fallen from our heads."

"To think profoundly, to seek and speak truth, to love justice and denounce wrong is to draw upon one’s self the ill will of many."

"It is the business of culture to make us able to consider with intelligent interest all real opinions, even those we do not and can not accept."

"The test of the worth of a school is not the amount of knowledge it imparts, but the self-activity it calls forth."

"As a brave man goes into fire or flood or pestilence to save a human life, so a generous mind follows after truth and love, and is not frightened from the pursuit by danger or toil or obloquy."

"There is some lack either of sense or of character in one who becomes involved in difficulties with the worthless or the vicious."

"More inspiring and interesting teaching alone can make progress in education possible: for such teaching alone has power to produce greater self-activity, greater concentration of mind, greater desire to learn not only how to get a living, but how to live."

"Each individual bears within himself an ideal man, and to bring him forth in perfect form is his divinely imposed life-work."

"He who leaves school, knowing little, but with a longing for knowledge, will go farther than one who quits, knowing many things, but not caring to learn more."

"To think of education as a means of preserving institutions however excellent, is to have a superficial notion of its end and purpose, which is to mould and fashion men who are more than institutions, who create, outgrow, and re-create them."

"As we can not love what is hateful, let us accustom ourselves neither to think nor to speak of disagreeable things and persons."

"Folly will run its course and it is the part of wisdom not to take it too seriously."

"If our opinions rest upon solid ground, those who attack them do not make us angry, but themselves ridiculous."

"The disinterested love of truth which culture fosters is akin to the unselfishness which is a characteristic of the good."

"It is the tendency of the study of science to make us patient, humble and attentive to the smallest things. Is not this part of religion?"

"In giving us dominion over the animal kingdom God has signified His will that we subdue the beast within ourselves."

"What we enjoy, not what we possess, is ours, and in labouring for the possession of many things, we lose the power to enjoy the best."

"When the crowd acclaims its favorites it applauds itself."

"When one sense has been bribed the others readily bear false witness."

"The innocence which is simply ignorance is not virtue."

"A gentleman does not appear to know more or to be more than those with whom he is thrown into company."

"There are who mistake the spirit of pugnacity for the spirit of piety, and thus harbor a devil instead of an angel."

"Be watchful lest thou lose the power of desiring and loving what appeals to the soul—this is the miser’s curse—this the chain and ball the sensualist drags."

"It is a large part of learning to know what one wants, and where it may be found in its most authentic form."

"What we acquire with joy, we possess with indifference."

"A great man, who lives intimately with his admirers, with difficulty escapes being made ridiculous."

"Insight makes argument ridiculous."

"We truly know only what we have taught ourselves."

"The happiness of the ignorant is but an animal’s paradise."

"Reform the world within thyself, which is thy proper world."

"Base thy life on principle, not on rules."

"Culture makes the whole world our dwelling place; our palace in which we take our ease and find ourselves at one with all things."

"To secure approval one must remain within the bounds of conventional mediocrity. Whatever lies beyond, whether it be greater insight and virtue, or greater stolidity and vice, is condemned. The noblest men, like the worst criminals, have been done to death."

"Nothing requires so little mental effort as to narrate or follow a story. Hence everybody tells stories and the readers of stories outnumber all others."

"Not to be able to utter one’s thought without giving offence, is to lack culture."

"The pessimist writes over the gates of life what the poet has inscribed on the portals of hell—”Abandon hope, ye who enter here.”"

"When we have attained success, we see how inferior it is to the hope, yearning and enthusiasm with which we started forth in life’s morning."