A way foolishness has of revenging itself is to excommunicate the world.

To cement a new friendship, especially between foreigners or persons of a different social world, a spark with which both were secretly charged must fly from person to person, and cut across the accidents of place and time.

Nothing can be lower or more wholly instrumental than the substance and cause of all things.

Saints cannot arise where there have been no warriors, nor philosophers where a prying beast does not remain hidden in the depths.

A great man need not be virtuous, nor his opinions right, but he must have a firm mind, a distinctive luminous character.

The loftiest edifices need the deepest foundations.

Manhood and sagacity ripen of themselves; it suffices not to repress or distort them.

Habit is stronger than reason.

It is indeed from the experience of beauty and happiness, from the occasional harmony between our nature and our environment, that we draw our conception of the divine life.

Men have feverishly conceived a heaven only to find it insipid, and a hell to find it ridiculous.