Maury had a very modest estimate of his own work. He did not claim to have discovered anything. “I only bring together”, he wrote, “the observations that others have made, and then leave it to the observations themselves to discover their own meaning in their own way. Sometimes, indeed, I do become the mouthpiece of these observations and proclaim to the world what they reveal to me. But in this I consider myself merely as an instrument. I am fortunate, indeed, when I succeed in rightly interpreting the meaning of the observations, and am happy always to find concurrence in the opinions expressed or entertained by older and wiser”. His investigations on every subject were directed toward some practical benefit to his fellowmen, and he often quoted with appreciation the saying that he who made two blades of grass grow where only one had grown before was a benefactor to the world. This practical attitude toward his work and toward life in general led Maury to have very definite ideas about education. These appeared to some extent in his scheme for a Naval School, but they were more fully revealed in his letters. Latin and Greek, he thought, should not be given the place of first importance as compared with mathematics and chemistry, and he declared that West Point was the only tolerable institution in the United States because of the absence there of the humbuggery of the Learned Languages. Female seminaries he considered to be “downright cheats” because of the superficiality of the knowledge imparted there. He was opposed to the neglect of the study of English, so prevalent in the schools and colleges of his day, and thought that Spanish, French, and German were languages well worthy of study. Naturally, he laid great stress on the value of mathematical, geographical, and other scientific studies. “As for the sciences”, he declared, “more is now annually developed in every department thereof than was ever known, dreamed, or thought of, by the ancients”. Maury himself had been largely self-educated, but his speeches as well as his writings show that he had read widely and discriminatingly. He was well read not only in science and naval history and biography, but also in the classics, and often quoted passages from Shakespeare, Byron, Dante, and the Bible; in the course of a single speech he referred intelligently to Plato, Plutarch, Seneca, Goethe, Bacon, Newton, and other authors. He is said to have been fond of reading aloud to his family from Scott’s novels and poems, Shakespeare’s plays, and the works of many other British poets, particularly Wordsworth and Mrs. Hemans.