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

The lover knows much more about absolute good and universal beauty than any logician or theologian, unless the latter, too, be lovers in disguise.

Heaven is to be at peace with things.

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

Religions are the great fairy tales of conscience.

Science is nothing but developed perception, interpreted intent, common sense rounded out and minutely articulated.

The theater, for all its artifices, depicts life in a sense more truly than history.