The loftiest edifices need the deepest foundations.

Society is like the air, necessary to breathe but insufficient to live on.

It takes patience to appreciate domestic bliss; volatile spirits prefer unhappiness.

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.

Language is like money, without which specific relative values may well exist and be felt, but cannot be reduced to a common denominator.

To attempt to be religious without practicing a specific religion is as possible as attempting to speak without a specific language.

A conception not reducible to the small change of daily experience is like a currency not exchangeable for articles of consumption; it is not a symbol, but a fraud.