Opinion is like a pendulum and obeys the same law.

A man must have grown old and lived long in order to see how short life is.

The assumption that animals are without rights, and the illusion that our treatment of them has no moral significance, is a positively outrageous example of Western crudity and barbarity. Universal compassion is the only guarantee of morality.

When a new truth enters the world, the first stage of reaction to it is ridicule, the second stage is violent opposition, and in the third stage, that truth comes to be regarded as self-evident.

No one can transcend their own individuality.

A man of intellect is like an artist who gives a concert without any help from anyone else, playing on a single instrument--a piano, say, which is a little orchestra in itself. Such a man is a little world in himself; and the effect produced by various instruments together, he produces single-handed, in the unity of his own consciousness. Like the piano, he has no place in a symphony; he is a soloist and performs by himself--in soli tude, it may be; or if in the company with other instruments, only as principal; or for setting the tone, as in singing.

The man who goes up in a balloon does not feel as if he were ascending; he only sees the earth sinking deeper below him.