Each bud flowers but once and each flower has but its minute of perfect beauty; so, in the garden of the soul each feeling has, as it were, its flowering instant, its one and only moment of expansive grace and radiant kingship.

What we do not understand we have no right to judge

Never to tire, never to grow cold; to be patient, sympathetic, tender; to look for the budding flower and the opening heart; to hope always; like God, to love always--this is duty.

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.

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.

We only understand that which already is within us.