Women see better than men. Men see lazily, if they do not expect to act. Women see quite without any wish to act.

A man's library is a sort of harem.

Ideas must work through the brains and the arms of good and brave men or they are no better than dreams.

...man is an analogist, and studies relations in all objects. He is placed in the center of beings, and a ray of relation passes from every other being to him. And neither can man be understood without these objects, nor these objects without man.

The best nations are those most widely related; and navigation, as effecting a world-wide mixture, is the most potent advancer ofnations.

There is properly no history, only biography.

I grieve that grief can teach me nothing, nor carry me one step into real nature.