The different steps and degrees of education may be compared to the artificer's operations upon marble; it is one thing to dig it out of the quarry, and another to square it, to give it gloss and lustre, call forth every beautiful spot and vein, shape it into a column, or animate it into a statue.
Thomas Gray, William Mason (1820). “The poems and letters of Thomas Gray, with memoirs of his life and writings by W. Mason”, p.198
