Ghost stories are always listened to and well received in private, but pitilessly disavowed in public. For my own part, ignorant as I am of the way in which the human spirit enters the world and the way in which he goes out of it, I dare not deny the truth of many such narratives.
Virtue is always too much of a piece and too ignorant of those shades of feeling and of temperament that enable us to squint when we are placed in a false position.
A man does not wonder at what he sees frequently, even though he be ignorant of the reason. If anything happens which he has not seen before, he calls it a prodigy.
If the English educated neglect, as they have done and even now continue, as some do, to be ignorant of their mother tongue, linguistic starvation will abide.
Gold in its native state is but dull, unornamental stuff, and only lowborn metals excite the admiration of the ignorant with an ostentatious glitter. However, like the rest of the world, I still go on underrating men of gold and glorifying men of mica.