If society gives up the right to impose the death penalty, then self-help will appear again and personal vendettas will be around the corner.

True observers of nature, although they may think differently, will still agree that everything that is, everything that is observable as a phenomenon, can only exhibit itself in one of two ways. It is either a primal polarity that is able to unify, or it is a primal unity that is able to divide. The operation of nature consists of splitting the united or uniting the divided; this is the eternal movement of systole and diastole of the heartbeat, the inhalation and exhalation of the world in which we live, act, and exist.

We should know mankind better if we were not so anxious to resemble one another.

I bid the chords sweet music make, And all must follow in my wake.

So much has already been said about Shakespeare that there doesn't seem to be anything more to say; yet it is the quality of the spirit that it forever stimulates the spirit.

Ill-humor is nothing more than an inward feeling of our own want of merit, a dissatisfaction with ourselves which is always united with an envy that foolish vanity excites.

Men's prejudices rest upon their character for the time being and cannot be overcome, as being part and parcel of themselves. Neither evidence nor common sense nor reason has the slightest influence upon them.