Love is at once more animal than friendship and more divine.

The young man who has not wept is a savage, and the older man who will not laugh is a fool.

Religious doctrines would do well to withdraw their pretension to be dealing with matters of fact. That pretension is not only the source of the conflicts of religion with science and the vain and bitter controversies of sects; it is also the cause of the impurity and incoherence of religion in the soul.

Catastrophes come when some dominant institution, swollen like a soap-bubble and still standing without foundations, suddenly crumbles at the touch of what may seem a word or idea, but is really some stronger material source.

It is right to prefer our own country to all others, because we are children and citizens before we can be travellers or philosophers.

America is the greatest of opportunities and the worst of influences.

There is no greater stupidity or meanness than to take uniformity for an ideal.