In this age, the mere example of non-conformity, the mere refusal to bend the knee to custom, is itself a service. Precisely because the tyranny of opinion is such as to make eccentricity a reproach, it is desirable, in order to break through that tyranny, that people should be eccentric. Eccentricity has always abounded when and where strength of character has abounded; and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and moral courage which it contained. That so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of the time.

All that makes existence valuable to any one depends on the enforcement of restraints upon the actions of other people.

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

When the land is cultivated entirely by the spade and no horses are kept, a cow is kept for every three acres of land.

The beliefs which we have most warrant for, have no safeguard to rest on, but a standing invitation to the whole world to prove them unfounded.

Men do not desire to be rich, but to be richer than other men.

The true virtue of human beings is fitness to live together as equals; claiming nothing for themselves but what they as freely concede to everyone else; regarding command of any kind as an exceptional neccessity, and in all cases a temporary one.