The tide of evolution carries everything before it, thoughts no less than bodies, and persons no less than nations.

One of the peculiarities of recent speculation, especially in America, is that ideas are abandoned in virtue of a mere change of feeling, without any new evidence or new arguments. We do not nowadays refute our predecessors, we pleasantly bid them good-bye.

The world is not respectable; it is mortal, tormented, confused, deluded forever; but it is shot through with beauty, with love, with glints of courage and laughter; and in these, the spirit blooms timidly, and struggles to the light amid the thorns.

Knowledge of what is possible is the beginning of happiness.

The diseases which destroy a man are no less natural than the instincts which preserve him.

For Shakespeare, in the matter of religion, the choice lay between Christianity and nothing. He chose nothing.

The God to whom depth in philosophy bring back men's minds is far from being the same from whom a little philosophy estranges them