Take hope from the heart of man, and you make him a beast of prey.

The Christian religion, outwardly and even in intention humble, does, without meaning it, teach man to regard himself as the most important of all created things. Man surveys the starry heavens and hears with his ears of the plurality of worlds; yet his religion bids him believe that his alone out of these innumerable spheres is the object of his master's love and sacrifice.

Woman already controls by not seeming to do so. Talk no more of her rights.

Coleridge cried; "O God, how glorious it is to live!" Renan asks, "O God, when will it be worth while to live?" In Nature we echo the poet; in the world we echo the thinker.

It is quite easy for stupid people to be happy; they believe in fables, and they trot on in a beaten track like a horse on a tramway.

I have known men who have been sold and bought a hundred times, who have only got very fat and very comfortable in the process of exchange.

Count art by gold, and it fetters the feet it once winged.