“What is not started today is never finished tomorrow.”

“Whether one show one's self a man of genius in science or compose a song, the only point is, whether the thought, the discovery, the deed, is living and can live on.”

“A person hears only what they understand.”

“Duty is the demand of the hour.”

“He who cannot draw on three thousand years is living from hand to mouth.”

“It now appears that the negro race is, more than any other, susceptible of rapid civilization. The emancipation is observed, in the islands, to have wrought for the negro a benefit as sudden as when a thermometer is brought out of the shade into the sun. It has given him eyes and ears.”

“Emancipation is the demand of civilization. That is a principle; everything else is an intrigue.”

“In the highest civilization, the book is still the highest delight. He who has once known its satisfactions is provided with a resource against calamity.”