Life is judged with all the blindness of life itself.

Everything in nature is lyrical in its ideal essence, tragic in its fate, and comic in its existence.

It is one thing to lack a heart and another to possess eyes and a just imagination.

Society itself is an accident to the spirit, and if society in any of its forms is to be justified morally it must be justified at the bar of the individual conscience.

For gold is tried in the fire and acceptable men in the furnace of adversity.

The works of nature first acquire a meaning in the commentaries they provoke.

Uselessness is a fatal accusation to bring against any act which is done for its presumed utility, but those which are done for their own sake are their own justification.