There is a limit to the legitimate interference of collective opinion with individual independence: and to find that limit, and maintain it against encroachment, is as indispensable to a good condition of human affairs, as protection against political despotism.

Over one's mind and over one's body the individual is sovereign.

Every one is degraded, whether aware of it or not, when other people, without consulting him, take upon themselves unlimited power to regulate his destiny.

The idea is essentially repulsive, of a society held together only by the relations and feelings arising out of pecuniary interest.

Money is a machine for doing quickly and commodiously what would be done, though less quickly and commodiously, without it.

Photography is a brief complicity between foresight and luck.

Seeming contentment is real discontent, combined with indolence or self-indulgence, which, while taking no legitimate means of raising itself, delights in bringing others down to its own level.