To want to be what one can be is purpose in life.

It is useless either to hate or to love truth - but it should be noticed.

We are so placid that the smallest tremor of objection to anything at all is taken as a full-scale revolution. Should any soul speak up in favor of the obvious, it is taken as a symptom of the influence of the left, the right, the pink, the black, the dangerous. An idea for its own sake - especially an obvious idea - has no respectability.

It isn't the instrument that influences High-Minded or Low-Minded; it's the quality of Mind itself.

An essay is a thing of the imagination. If there is information in an essay, it is by-the-by, and if there is an opinion, one need not trust it for the long run. A genuine essay rarely has an educational, polemical, or sociopolitical use; it is the movement of a free mind at play.

Paradise is only for those who have already been there.

All politicians know that every 'temporary' political initiative promised as a short-term poultice stays on the books forever.