An act of goodness is of itself an act of happiness. No reward coming after the event can compare with the sweet reward that went with it.

Happiness is rarely absent; it is we that know not of its presence.

(there is) no other means of escaping from one's consciousness than to deny it, to look upon it as an organic disease of the terrestrial intelligence - a disease which we must endeavor to cure by an action which must appear to us an action of violent and willful madness, but which, on the other side of our appearances, is probably an action of health. ("Of Immortality")

In the world which we know, among the different and primitive geniuses that preside over the evolution of the several species, there exists not one, excepting that of the dog, that ever gave a thought to the presence of man.

At every crossroad on the way that leads to the future, each progressive spirit is opposed by a thousand men appointed to guard the past.

We are never the same with others as when we are alone. We are different, even when we are in the dark with them.

The manner in which the hours of freedom are spent determines, no less than labor and war, the moral worth of a nation.