The only substance properly so called is the soul.

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

As it is impossible to be outside God, the best is consciously to dwell in Him.

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 mind must have for ballast the clear conception of duty, if it is not to fluctuate between levity and despair.

Man is a passion which brings a will into play, which works an intelligence.

It gives liberty and breadth to thought, to learn to judge our own epoch from the point of view of universal history, history from the point of view of geological periods, geology from the point of view of astronomy.