There are three traps that strangle philosophy: The church, the marriage bed, and the professor's chair.

I have no axe to grind; only my thoughts to burnish.

The passions grafted on wounded pride are the most inveterate; they are green and vigorous in old age.

It is the acme of life to understand life.

Government is the political representative of a natural equilibrium, of custom, of inertia; it is by no means a representative of reason.

A great man need not be virtuous, nor his opinions right, but he must have a firm mind, a distinctive luminous character.

We need sometimes to escape into open solitudes, into aimlessness, into the moral holiday of running some pure hazard in order to sharpen the edge of life, to taste hardship, and to be compelled to work desperately for a moment at no matter what.