Whatever folly men commit, be their shortcomings or their vices what they may, let us exercise forbearance; remember that when these faults appear in others it is our follies and vices that we behold.

A man of talent will strive for money and reputation; but the spring that moves genius to the production of its works is not as easy to name

That I could clamber to the frozen moon. And draw the ladder after me.

Something of great importance now past is inferior to something of little importance now present, in that the latter is a reality, and related to the former as something to nothing.

Nothing shocks our moral feelings so deeply as cruelty does. We can forgive every other crime, but not cruelty. The reason for this is that it is the very opposite of compassion.

To become reconciled to a friend with whom you have broken, is a form of weakness; and you pay the penalty of it when he takes the first opportunity of doing precisely the very thing which brought about the breach.

Every genius is a great child; he gazes out at the world as something strange, a spectacle, and therefore with purely objective interest