He who says he hates every kind of flattery, and says it in earnest, certainly does not yet know every kind of flattery.

It not seldom happens that in the purposeless rovings and wanderings of the imagination we hunt down such game as can be put to use by our purposeful philosophy in its well-ordered household.

It is almost everywhere the case that soon after it is begotten the greater part of human wisdom is laid to rest in repositories.

To receive applause for works which do not demand all our powers hinders our advance towards a perfecting of our spirit. It usually means that thereafter we stand still.

What most clearly characterizes true freedom and its true employment is its misemployment.

He was always smoothing and polishing himself, and in the end he became blunt before he was sharp.

One might call habit a moral friction: something that prevents the mind from gliding over things but connects it with them and makes it hard for it to free itself from them.