Action is coarsened thought; thought becomes concrete, obscure, and unconscious.

What we do not understand we have no right to judge

The test of every religious, political, or educational system, is the man which it forms. If a system injures the intelligence it is bad. If it injures the character it is vicious. If it injures the conscience it is criminal.

Time is but the measure of the difficulty of a conception. Pure thought has scarcely any need of time, since it perceives the two ends of an idea almost at the same moment.

[T]he habit of scientific analysis ... exhausts the material offered to it.

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

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.