Perhaps the only true dignity of man is his capacity to despise himself.

The spirit's foe in man has not been simplicity, but sophistication.

A man is morally free when, in full possession of his living humanity, he judges the world, and judges other men, with uncompromising sincerity.

Skepticism is the chastity of the intellect, and it is shameful to surrender it too soon or to the first comer.

Love is a brilliant illustration of a principle everywhere discoverable: namely, that human reason lives by turning the friction of material forces into the light of ideal goods.

. . . until the curtain was rung down on the last act of the drama (and it might have no last act!) he wished the intellectual cripples and the moral hunchbacks not to be jeered at; perhaps they might turn out to be the heroes of the play.

Even under the most favorable circumstances no mortal can be asked to seize the truth in its wholeness or at its center.