If you want to know your true opinion of someone, watch the effect produced in you by the first sight of a letter from him.

Patriotism, when it wants to make itself felt in the domain of learning, is a dirty fellow who should be thrown out of doors.

Every parting gives a foretaste of death, every reunion a hint of the resurrection.

Honor means that a man is not exceptional; fame, that he is. Fame is something which must be won; honor, only something which must not be lost.

If there is anything in the world that can really be called a man's property, it is surely that which is the result of his mental activity.

It is difficult, if not impossible, to define the limit of our reasonable desires in respect of possessions.

Still, instead of trusting what their own minds tell them, men have as a rule a weakness for trusting others who pretend to supernatural sources of knowledge.