Being, belief and reason are pure relations, which cannot be dealt with absolutely, and are not things but pure scholastic concepts, signs for understanding, not for worshipping, aids to awaken our attention, not to fetter it.

What Tarquin the Proud said in his garden with the poppy blooms was understood by the son but not by the messenger.

What good to me is the festive garment of freedom when I am in a slave's smock at home?

A writer who is in a hurry to be understood today or tomorrow runs the danger of being misunderstood the day after tomorrow.

Hence it happens that one takes words for concepts, and concepts for the things themselves

The product of paper and printed ink, that we commonly call the book, is one of the great visible mediators between spirit and time, and, reflecting zeitgeist, lasts as long as ore and stone.

Our reason arises, at the very least, from this twofold lesson of sensuous revelations and human testimonies.