History is only a catalogue of the forgotten.

No man, however strong, can serve ten years as schoolmaster, priest, or Senator, and remain fit for anything else.

Every man who has at last succeeded, after long effort, in calling up the divinity which lies hidden in a woman's heart, is startled to find that he must obey the God he summoned.

At the utmost, the active-minded young man should ask of his teacher only mastery of his tools. The young man himself, the subject of education, is a certain form of energy; the object to be gained is economy of his force; the training is partly the clearing away of obstacles, partly the direct application of effort. Once acquired, the tools and models may be thrown away.

Silence alone is respectable and respected. I believe God to be silence.

The great word Evolution had not yet, in 1860, made a new religion of history, but the old religion had preached the same doctrinefor a thousand years without finding in the entire history of Rome anything but flat contradiction.

The proof that a philosopher does not know what he is talking about is apt to sadden his followers before it reacts on himself.