No great intellectual thing was ever done by great effort.

When love and skill work together, expect a masterpiece.

Anger

The anger of a person who is strong, can always bide its time.

Arts and Artists

What distinguishes a great artist from a weak one is first their sensibility and tenderness; second, their imagination, and third, their industry.

Books and Reading

Be sure that you go to the author to get at his meaning, not to find yours.

To use books rightly, is to go to them for help; to appeal to them when our own knowledge and power fail; to be led by them into wider sight and purer conception than our own, and to receive from them the united sentence of the judges and councils of all time, against our solitary and unstable opinions.

Change

They are the weakest-minded and the hardest-hearted men that most love change.

Children

In great countries, children are always trying to remain children, and the parents want to make them into adults. In vile countries, the children are always wanting to be adults and the parents want to keep them children.

Desire

Tell me what you like and I'll tell you what you are.

Education

The first condition of education is being able to put someone to wholesome and meaningful work.

Greatness

A great thing can only be done by a great person; and they do it without effort.

Honesty

To make your children capable of honesty is the beginning of education.

Imagination

The imagination is never governed, it is always the ruling and divine power.

Language

The secret of language is the secret of sympathy and its full charm is possible only to the gentle.

Lies and Lying

No lying knight or lying priest ever prospered in any age, but especially not in the dark ones. Men prospered then only in following an openly declared purpose, and preaching candidly beloved and trusted creeds.

Money

It is not how much one makes but to what purpose one spends.

Nations

Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts -- the book of their deeds, the book of their words and the book of their art.

Punishment

Punishment is the last and the least effective instrument in the hands of the legislator for the prevention of crime.

Rivalry

Nothing is ever done beautifully which is done in rivalship: or nobly, which is done in pride.

Skepticism

Nearly all the powerful people of this age are unbelievers, the best of them in doubt and misery, the most in plodding hesitation, doing as well as they can, what practical work lies at hand.

Spirit and Spirituality

Spiritual power begins by directing animal power to other than egoistic ends.

Success

Success by the laws of competition signifies a victory over others by obtaining the direction and profits of their work. This is the real source of all great riches.

Vanity

The common practice of keeping up appearances with society is a mere selfish struggle of the vain with the vain.