Insincerity is always weakness; sincerity even in error is strength.

The true function of philosophy is to educate us in the principles of reasoning and not to put an end to further reasoning by the introduction of fixed conclusions.

A man may be variously accomplished, and yet be a feeble poet.

Mathematicians do not write for the circulating library.

Metaphysical ghosts cannot be killed, because they cannot be touched; but they may be dispelled by dispelling the twilight in which shadows and solidities are easily confounded. The Vital Principle is an entity of this ghostly kind; and although the daylight has dissipated it, and positive Biology is no longer vexed with its visitations, it nevertheless reappears in another shape in the shadowy region of mystery which surrounds biological and all other questions.

All great authors are seers.

Literature is at once the cause and the effect of social progress.