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He seemed to me to be one of those men who have not very extended minds, but who know what they know very well—shallow streams, and clear because they are shallow.

S. T. Coleridge (Table Talk).

To know what you prefer, instead of humbly saying Amen to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul alive.

R. L. Stevenson (Virginibus Puerisque).

Tout comprendre c’est tout pardonner.

(To know all is forgive all.)

French Proverb.

This proverb is said to have originated from a sentence in Mme. de Staël’s Corinne, Tout comprendre rend très-indulgent, “Understanding everything makes one very forgiving.”

The true life of the human community is planted deep in the private affections of its members; in the greatness of its individual minds; in the pure severities of its domestic conscience; in the noble and transforming thoughts that fertilize its sacred nooks. Who can observe, without astonishment, the durable action of men truly great on the history of the world, and the evanescence of vast military revolutions, once threatening all things with destruction? How often is it the fate of the former to be invisible for an age, and then live for ever; of the latter, to sweep a generation from the earth, and then vanish with slight trace?