You believe I run after the strange because I do not know the beautiful; no, it is because you do not know the beautiful that I seek the strange.

I made the journey to knowledge like dogs who go for walks with their masters, a hundred times forward and backward over the same territory; and when I arrived I was tired.

We now possess four principles of morality: 1) a philosophical: do good for its own sake, out of respect for the law; 2) a religious: do good because it is God's will, out of love of God; 3) a human: do good because it will promote your happiness, out of self-love; 4) a political: do good because it will promote the welfare of the society of which you are a part, out of love of society having regard to yourself. But is this not all one single principle, only viewed from different sides?

As I take up my pen I feel myself so full, so equal to my subject, and see my book so clearly before me in embryo, I would almost like to try to say it all in a single word.

The most heated defenders of a science, who cannot endure the slightest sneer at it, are commonly those who have not made very much progress in it and are secretly aware of this defect.

It is a great shame; most of our words are misused tools / which often still smell of the mud in which previous owners / desecrated them.

When an acquaintance goes by I often step back from my window, not so much to spare him the effort of acknowledging me as to spare myself the embarrassment of seeing that he has not done so.