A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.

It is said that when manners are licentious, a revolution is always near: the virtue of woman being the main girth and bandage ofsociety; because a man will not lay up an estate for children any longer than whilst he believes them to be his own.

God never jests with us, and will not compromise the end of nature, by permitting any inconsequence in its procession.

The soul is not born; it does not die; it was not produced from anyone… Unborn, eternal, it is not slain, though the body is slain.

All reform aims, in some one particular, to let the soul have its way through us; in other words, to engage us to obey.

The cardinal virtue of a teacher [is] to protect the pupil from his own influence.

The only thing that can grow is the thing you give energy to.