“God be thanked for books; they are the voices of the distant and the dead, and make us heirs of the spiritual life of past ages
“A baby will make love stronger, days shorter, nights longer, bankroll smaller, home happier, clothes shabbier, the past forgotten, and the future worth living for
“The simplest schoolboy is now familiar with truths for which Archimedes would have sacrificed his life.
“Tradition is an important help to history, but its statements should be carefully scrutinized before we rely on them
“The fatal metaphor of progress, which means leaving things behind us, has utterly obscured the real idea of growth, which means leaving things inside us.
“A moral being is one who is capable of reflecting on his past actions and their motives - of approving of some and disapproving of others
“We must, however, acknowledge, as it seems to me, that man with all his noble qualities... still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin.
“It is folly for an eminent man to think of escaping censure, and a weakness to be affected with it. All the illustrious persons of antiquity, and indeed of every age in the world, have passed through this fiery persecution
“Books are the legacies that a great genius leaves to mankind, which are delivered down from generation to generation as presents to the posterity of those who are yet unborn
“Science has done more for the development of western civilization in one hundred years than Christianity did in eighteen hundred years.
“The disadvantage of men not knowing the past is that they do not know the present. History is a hill or high point of vantage, from which alone men see the town in which they live or the age in which they are living
“No one ever regarded the First of January with indifference. It is that from which all date their time, and count upon what is left. It is the nativity of our common Adam