The beginning of an acquaintance whether with persons or things is to get a definite outline for our ignorance.
Self-confidence is apt to address itself to an imaginary dullness in others; as people who are well off speak in a cajoling tone to the poor.
Perspective, as its inventor remarked, is a beautiful thing. What horrors of damp huts, where human beings languish, may not become picturesque through aerial distance!
No evil dooms us hopelessly except the evil we love, and desire to continue in, and make no effort to escape from.
Life began with waking up and loving my mother’s face.
Knowledge slowly builds up what ignorance in an hour pulls down.
Ignorant kindness may have the effect of cruelty; but to be angry with it as if it were direct cruelty would be an ignorant unkindness.
Ignorance gives one a large range of probabilities.
If you are to rule men, you must rule them through their own ideas.
I think I dislike what I don’t like more than I like what I like.
Gossip is a sort of smoke that comes from the dirty tobacco-pipes of those who diffuse it: it proves nothing but the bad taste of the smoker.
Genius at first is little more than a great capacity for receiving discipline.
