Old age is a lease nature only signs as a particular favor, and it may be, to one, only in the space of two or three ages; and then with a pass to boot, to carry him through, all the traverses and difficulties she has strewed in the way of his long career.

But sure there is need of other remedies than dreaming, a weak contention of art against nature.

Fame and tranquility can never be bedfellows.

I set forth notions that are human and my own, simply as human notions considered in themselves, not as determined and decreed by heavenly ordinance.

We must reserve a back shop all our own entirely free, in which to establish our real liberty and our principal retreat and solitude.

It is an absolute perfection... to get the very most out of one's individuality.

The world is but a perennial movement. All things in it are in constant motion-the earth, the rocks of the Caucasus, the pyramids of Egypt-both with the common motion and with their own.