Let a man once overcome his selfish terror at his own finitude, and his finitude itself is, in one sense, overcome.

To keep beauty in its place is to make all things beautiful.

Knowledge of what is possible is the beginning of happiness.

Historical investigation has for its aim to fix the order and character of events throughout past time and in all places. The task is frankly superhuman.

Culture is on the horns of this dilemma: if profound and noble it must remain rare, if common it must become mean.

A string of excited, fugitive, miscellaneous pleasures is not happiness; happiness resides in imaginative reflection and judgment, when the picture of one's life, or of human life, as it truly has been or is, satisfies the will, and is gladly accepted.

Every nation thinks its own madness normal and requisite; more passion and more fancy it calls folly, less it calls imbecility.