The great rule: If the little bit you have is nothing special in itself, at least find a way of saying it that is a little bit special.

He who is enamored of himself will at least have the advantage of being inconvenienced by few rivals.

To many people virtue consists chiefly in repenting faults, not in avoiding them.

One cannot demand of a scholar that he show himself a scholar everywhere in society, but the whole tenor of his behavior must none the less betray the thinker, he must always be instructive, his way of judging a thing must even in the smallest matters be such that people can see what it will amount to when, quietly and self-collected, he puts this power to scholarly use.

A person reveals his character by nothing so clearly as the joke he resents.

What I do not like about our definitions of genius is that there is in them nothing of the day of judgment, nothing of resounding through eternity and nothing of the footsteps of the Almighty.

They do not think, therefore they are not.