In the sublimest flights of the soul, rectitude is never surmounted, love is never outgrown.

When I read a good book, I wish my life were three thousand years long.

I think all men know better than they do; know that the institutions we so volubly commend are go-carts and baubles; but they darenot trust their presentiments.

I like man, but not men.

The revelation of thought takes men out of servitude into freedom.

What I must do is all that concerns me, not what people think. This rule,equally arduous in actual and intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

We are amphibious creatures, weaponed for two elements, having two sets of faculties, the particular and the catholic.