Modern man is staggering and losing his balance because he is being pelted with little pieces of alleged fact which are native to the newspapers; and, if they turn out not to be facts, that is still more native to newspapers.
It is open to every man to choose the direction of his striving; and also every man may draw comfort from Lessing's fine saying, that the search for truth is more precious than its possession.
There certainly was some great mismanagement in the education of those two young men. One has got all the goodness, and the other all the appearance of it.
No man can be brave who thinks pain the greatest evil; nor temperate, who considers pleasure the highest god.
[Lat., Fortis vero, dolorem summum malum judicans; aut temperans, voluptatem summum bonum statuens, esse certe nullo modo potest.]
We must not be so ready to fancy ourselves intentionally injured. We must not expect a lively young man to be always so guarded and circumspect. It is very often nothing but our own vanity that deceives us. Women fancy admiration means more than it does.
For the rest, he was the same to all men, the fashionable world and the ordinary people. He judged nothing in haste, or without taking account of the cirumstances. He said, 'Let me see how the fault arose.
Social questions are too sectional, too topical, too temporal to move a man to the mighty effort which is needed to produce greatpoetry. Prison reform may nerve Charles Reade to produce an effective and businesslike prose melodrama; but it could never produce Hamlet, Faust, or Peer Gynt.