Before crime is committed conscience must be corrupted, and every bad man who succeeds in reaching a high point of wickedness begins with this.

The spirit of sarcasm lives and thrives in the midst of universal wreck; its balls are enchanted and itself invulnerable, and it braves retaliations and reprisals because itself is a mere flash, a bodiless and magical nothing.

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

Sympathy is the first condition of criticism.

We are never more discontented with others than when we are discontented with ourselves. The consciousness of wrong-doing makes us irritable, and our heart, in its cunning, quarrels with what is outside it, in order that it may deafen the clamor within.

The growth and development of the soul is more important than power and glory.

Truth is not only violated by falsehood; it may be equally outraged by silence.