“The benefits he acquires in such a place are not of a selfish kind, but extend themselves to his home, and to those whom it contains.”

Seeing education as something whose benefits spread through families · Speech, Manchester, 5 October 1843

• Friendship
• Hope

“It strikes me when I hear these things as if these great men looked upon the arts as a sort of dancing dogs, or Punch’s show, to be turned to for amusement when one has nothing else to do.”

Mocking the tendency to treat art as trivial entertainment · Speech, London, 8 May 1858

• Art
• Truth

“It is but a very short one, but the weight of such things is not measured by their length, and two much shorter words express the round of our human existence.”

Reflecting on how the briefest words can carry the heaviest human meanings · Speech, New York, 20 April 1868

• Mortality
• Time