Therefore all just persons are satisfied with their own praise. They refuse to explain themselves, and are content that new actions should do them that office. They believe that we communicate without speech, and above speech, and that no right action of ours is quite unaffecting to our friends, at whatever distance; for the influence of action is not to be measured by miles.

Society always consists, in greatest part, of young and foolish persons. The old, who have seen through the hypocrisy of the courts and statesmen, die, and leave no wisdom to their sons. They believe their own newspaper, as their fathers did at their age.

What forests of laurel we bring, and the tears of mankind, to those who stood firm against the opinion of their contemporaries!

These arts open great gates of a future, promising to make the world plastic and to lift human life out of its beggary to a god- like ease and power.

But I cannot recite, even thus rudely, laws of the intellect, without remembering that lofty and sequestered class of men who have been its prophets and oracles, the high-priesthood of the pure reason, the Trismegisti, the expounders of the principles of thought from age to age.

The artists must be sacrificed to their art. Like the bees, they must put their lives into the sting they give.

The man in the street does not know a star in the sky.