Hardly any original thoughts on mental or social subjects ever make their way among mankind or assume their proper importance in the minds even of their inventors, until aptly selected words or phrases have as it were nailed them down and held them fast.

It's hardly possible to overstate the value, in the present state of human improvement, of placing human beings in contact with other persons dissimilar to themselves, and with modes of thought and action unlike those with which they are familiar. Such communication has always been... one of the primary sources of progress.

The most important thing women have to do is to stir up the zeal of women themselves.

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

Almost all rich veins of original and striking speculation have been opened by systematic half-thinkers.

The great creative individual . . . is capable of more wisdom and virtue than collective man ever can be.

It often happens that the universal belief of one age of mankind — a belief from which no one was, nor without an extraordinary effort of genius and courage, could at that time be free — becomes to a subsequent age so palpable an absurdity, that the only difficulty then is to imagine how such a thing can ever have appeared credible.