Every situation is an equilibrium of forces; every life is a struggle between opposing forces working within the limits of a certain equilibrium

Sympathy is the first condition of criticism; reason and justice presuppose, at their origin, emotion.

To understand is to possess the thing understood, first by sympathy and then by intelligence.

He who floats with the current, who does not guide himself according to higher principles, who has no ideal, no convictions-such a man is . . . a thing moved, instead of a living and moving being-an echo, not a voice. The man who has no inner-life is a slave of his surroundings as the barometer is the obedient servant of the air.

Self-interest is an inexhaustible source of convenient illusions. The number of beings who wish to see truly is extraordinarily small.

He who asks of life nothing but the improvement of his own nature... is less liable than anyone else to miss and waste life.

Latent genius is but a presumption. Everything that can be, is bound to come into being, and what never comes into being is nothing.