I bid you conquer in your warfare against your four great enemies, the world, the devil, the flesh, and above all, that obstinate and perverse self-will, unaided by which the other three would be comparatively powerless.

It is natural that affluence should be followed by influence.

Philosophy cannot raise the commonalty up to her level: so, if she is to become popular, she must sink to theirs.

Many men spend their lives in gazing at their own shadows, and so dwindle away into shadows thereof.

Just, harmonious, temperate as is the spirit of liberty, there is in the name and mere notion of it a vagueness so opposite to the definite clearness of the moral law.

Some minds are made of blotting-paper: you can write nothing on them distinctly. They swallow the ink, and you find a large spot.

Poetry is to philosophy what the Sabbath is to the rest of the week.