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.

They think that nothing will happen because they have closed their doors, and they do not know that it is in the soul that things always happen, and that the world does not end at their housedoor.

He who sees without loving is only straining his eyes in the darkness.

To disdain today is to prove that yesterday has been misunderstood.

Brave old-flowers! Wall-flowers, Gilly flowers, Stocks! For even as the field-flowers, from which a trifle, a ray of beauty, a drop of perfume, divides them, they have charming names, the softest in the language; and each of them, like tiny, art-less ex-votos, or like medals bestowed by the gratitude of men, proudly bears three or four.

The decent moderation of today will be the least of human things tomorrow. At the time of the Spanish Inquisition, the opinion of good sense and of the good medium was certainly that people ought not to burn too large a number of heretics; extreme and unreasonable opinion obviously demanded that they should burn none at all.

Justice is the very last thing of all wherewith the universe concerns itself. It is equilibrium that absorbs its attention.