A journal takes the place of a confidant, that is, of friend or wife; it becomes a substitute for production, a substitute for country and public. It is a grief-cheating device, a mode of escape and withdrawal; but, factotum as it is, though it takes the place of everything, properly speaking it represents nothing at all.

We only understand that which already is within us.

It would have been a joy to me to be smiled upon, loved, encouraged, welcomed, and to obtain what I was so ready to give, kindness and goodwill. But to hunt down consideration and reputation - to force the esteem of others - seemed to me an effort unworthy of myself, almost a degradation.

If ignorance and passion are the foes of popular morality, it must be confessed that moral indifference is the malady of the cultivated classes.

The history of man is essentially zoological; it becomes human late in the day, and then only in the beautiful souls, the souls alive to justice, goodness, enthusiasm, and devotion. The angel shows itself rarely and with difficulty through the highly-organized brute.

For purposes of action nothing is more useful than narrowness of thought combined with energy of will.

War is a brutal and fierce means of pacification; it means the suppression of resistance by the destruction or enslavement of the conquered.