My body is but the lees of my better being.

People think that if a man has undergone any hardship, he should have a reward; but for my part, if I have done the hardest possible day's work, and then come to sit down in a corner and eat my supper comfortably -why, then I don't think I deserve any reward for my hard day's work -for am I not now at peace? Is not my supper good?

The ancients of the ideal description, instead of trying to turn their impracticable chimeras, as does the modern dreamer, into social and political prodigies, deposited them in great works of art, which still live while states and constitutions have perished, bequeathing to posterity not shameful defects but triumphant successes.

Only the man who says no is free

The great God absolute! The centre and circumference of all democracy! His omnipresence, our divine equality!

It is with fiction as with religion: it should present another world, and yet one to which we feel the tie.

Whenever we discover a dislike in us, toward any one, we should ever be a little suspicious of ourselves.