Our purity of taste is best tested by its universality, for if we can only admire this thing or that, we maybe use that our cause for liking is of a finite and false nature.

The only absolutely and unapproachably heroic element in the soldier's work seems to be-that he is paid little for it-and regularly.

In every person who comes near you look for what is good and strong.

Large fortunes are all founded either on the occupation of land, or lending or the taxation of labor.

People are eternally divided into two classes, the believer, builder, and praiser...and the unbeliever, destroyer and critic.

Curiosity is a gift, a capacity of pleasure in knowing, which if you destroy, you make yourself cold and dull.

Of all the things that oppress me, this sense of the evil working of nature herself -my disgust at her barbarity -clumsiness -darkness -bitter mockery of herself -is the most desolating.