Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual.

Eloquence is a republican art, as conversation is an aristocratic one.

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

Real unselfishness consists in sharing the interests of others.

Nothing can be meaner than the anxiety to live on, to live on anyhow and in any shape; a spirit with any honor is not willing to live except in its own way, and a spirit with any wisdom is not over-eager to live at all.

Injustice in this world is not something comparative; the wrong is deep, clear, and absolute in each private fate.

Religion is the love of life in the consciousness of impotence.