A society is in decay, final or transitional, when common sense really becomes uncommon.

Joy, which was the small publicity of the pagan, is the gigantic secret of the Christian.

The Reformer is always right about what's wrong. However, he's often wrong about what is right.

Very few reputations are gained by unsullied virtue.

It is assumed that the skeptic has no bias; whereas he has a very obvious bias in favour of skepticism.

It is true that there is a thing crudely called charity, which means charity to the deserving poor; but charity to the deserving is not charity at all, but justice. It is the undeserving who require it, and the ideal either does not exist at all, or exists wholly for them.

Man knows that there are in the soul tints more bewildering, more numberless, and more nameless that the colors of an autumn forest....Yet he seriously believes that these things can every one of them , in all their tones and semi-tones, in all their blends and unions, be accurately represented by an arbitrary system of grunts and squeals. He believes that an ordinary civilized stockbroker can really produce out of his own inside noises which denote all the mysteries of memory and all the agonies of desire.