Commonly men will only be brave as their fathers were brave, or timid.

Genius is a light which makes the darkness visible, like the lightning's flash, which perchance shatters the temple of knowledge itself.

We inspire friendship in men when we have contracted friendship with the gods.

To what end do I lead a simple life at all, pray? That I may teach others to simplify their lives? - and so all our lives be simplified merely, like an algebraic formula? Or not, rather, that I may make use of the ground I have cleared to live more worthily and profitably?

There are nowadays professors of philosophy, but not philosophers

The Indian's intercourse with Nature is at least such as admits of the greatest independence of each.

A temple, you know, was anciently "an open place without a roof," whose walls served merely to shut out the world and direct the mind toward heaven; but a modern meeting-house shuts out the heavens, while it crowds the world into still closer quarters.