The gods are partial to no era, but steadily shines their light in the heavens, while the eye of the beholder is turned to stone.There was but the sun and the eye from the first. The ages have not added a new ray to the one, nor altered a fibre of the other.

What we need to know in any case is very simple.

A simple and independent mind does not toil at the bidding of any prince.

The way in which men cling to old institutions after the life has departed out of them, and out of themselves, reminds me of those monkeys which cling by their tails - aye, whose tails contract about the limbs, even the dead limbs, of the forest, and they hang suspended beyond the hunter's reach long after they are dead. It is of no use to argue with such men. They have not an apprehensive intellect, but merely, as it were a prehensile tail.

A little thought is sexton to all the world.

The monster is never just there where we think he is. What is truly monstrous is our cowardice and sloth.

I suspect that, if you should go to the end of the world, you would find somebody there going farther, as if just starting for home at sundown, and having a last word before he drove off.