He thinks he believes only what he sees, but he is much better at believing than at seeing.

Let a man once overcome his selfish terror at his own finitude, and his finitude itself is, in one sense, overcome.

Nothing can so pierce the soul as the uttermost sigh of the body.

To most people, I fancy, the stars are beautiful; but if you asked why, they would be at a loss to reply, until they remembered what they had heard about astronomy, and the great size and distance and possible habitation of those orbs. ... [We] persuade ourselves that the power of the starry heavens lies in the suggestion of astronomical facts.

The constant demands of the heart and the belly can allow man only an incidental indulgence in the pleasures of the eye and the understanding.

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.

When men and women agree, it is only in their conclusions; their reasons are always different.