"The plan grows under the author's hand; new thoughts occur to him in the act of writing; he has not worked out the argument to the end before he begins."

"In politics we presume that everyone who knows how to get votes knows how to administer a city or a state. When we are ill… we do not ask for the handsomest physician, or the most eloquent one."

"The learning and knowledge that we have, is, at the most, but little compared with that of which we are ignorant."

"Come then, and let us pass a leisure hour in storytelling, and our story shall be the education of our heroes."

"Complacent ignorance is the most lethal sickness of the soul."

"Wealth is well known to be a great comforter."

"If a person does not attend to the meaning of terms as they are commonly used in argument, he may be involved even in greater paradoxes."

"Love is born into every human being; it calls back the halves of our original nature together; it tries to make one out of two and heal the wound of human nature."

"There are three arts which are concerned with all things. One which uses, another which makes, and a third which imitates them."

"Beholding beauty with the eye of the mind, he will be enabled to bring forth, not images of beauty, but realities (for he has hold not of an image but of a reality), and bringing forth and nourishing true virtue to become the friend of God and be immortal, if mortal man may."