the State only aims at instilling those qualities in its public by which its demands are obeyed, and its exchequer is filled. Its highest attainment is the reduction of mankind to clockwork. In its atmosphere all those finer and more delicate liberties, which require treatment and spacious expansion, inevitably dry up and perish. The State requires a taxpaying machine in which there is no hitch, an exchequer in which there is never a deficit, and a public, monotonous, obedient, colorless, spiritless, moving humbly like a flock of sheep along a straight high road between two walls.

Women hope that the dead love may revive; but men know that of all dead things none are so past recall as a dead passion.

There is nothing that you may not get people to believe in if you will only tell it them loud enough and often enough, till the welkin rings with it.

Honor is an old-world thing; but it smells sweet to those in whose hand it is strong.

The world never leaves one in ignorance or in peace.

I have met a thousand scamps; but I never met one who considered himself so. Self-knowledge isn't so common.

Who has passed by the fates of disillusion has died twice.