In any close society it is more urgent to restrain others than to be free oneself. Hence the tendency for the central authority to absorb and supersede such as are local or delegated.

If artists and poets are unhappy, it is after all because happiness does not interest them.

Before he sets out, the traveler must possess fixed interests and facilities to be served by travel.

At best, the true philosopher can fulfil his mission very imperfectly, which is to pilot himself, or at most a few voluntary companions who may find themselves in the same boat.

Periods of tranquillity are seldom prolific of creative achievement. Mankind has to be stirred up.

The family is an early expedient and in many ways irrational. If the race had developed a special sexless class to be nurses, pedagogues, and slaves, like the workers among ants and bees, then the family would have been unnecessary. Such a division of labor would doubtless have involved evils of its own, but it would have obviated some drags and vexations proper to the family.

To substitute judgments of fact for judgments of value is a sign of pedantic and borrowed criticism.