Conquering any difficulty always gives one a secret joy, for it means pushing back a boundary-line and adding to one's liberty.

In every loving woman there is a priestess of the past - a pious guardian of some affection, of which the object has disappeared.

Are we not all shipwrecked,...condemned to death?... However impatient our neighbours make us, however much indignation our race arouses, we are all bound together, and the companions of a chain-gang have everything to lose by mutual insults.

The philosopher is like a man fasting in the midst of universal intoxication. He alone perceives the illusion of which all creatures are the willing playthings; he is less duped than his neighbor by his own nature. He judges more sanely, he sees things as they are. It is in this that his liberty consists - in the ability to see clearly and soberly, in the power of mental record.

Time and space are fragments of the infinite for the use of finite creatures.

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

We only understand that which already is within us.