Man is a central creature between the animals, that is to say, the most perfect form, which unites the traits of all in the most complete epitome.

So says the most ancient book of the Earth; thus it is written on its leaves of marble, lime, sand, slate, and clay: ... that our Earth has fashioned itself, from its chaos of substances and powers, through the animating warmth of the creative spirit, to a peculiar and original whole, by a series of preparatory revolutions, till at last the crown of its creation, the exquisite and tender creature man, was enabled to appear.

Man is a central creature between the animals, that is to say, the most perfect form, which unites the traits of all in the most complete epitome.

Touch not the flute when drums are sounding around; when fools have the word, the wise will be silent.

Each nationality contains its centre of happiness within itself, as a bullet the centre of gravity.

The working of revolutions misleads me no more; it is as necessary to our race as its waves to the stream, that it may not be a stagnant marsh. Ever renewed in its forms, the genius of humanity blossoms.

Have you never observed that children will sometimes, of a sudden, give utterance to ideas which makes us wonder how they got possession of them? Which presuppose a long series of other ideas and secret self-communings? Which break forth like a full stream out of the earth, an infallible sign that the stream was not produced in a moment from a few raindrops, but had long been flowing concealed beneath the ground?