The proof of a high education is the ability to speak about complex matters as simply as possible.

Classics which at home are drowsily read have a strange charm in a country inn, or in the transom of a merchant brig.

The world-spirit is a good swimmer, and storms and waves can not drown him. He snaps his fingers at laws; and so, throughout history, heaven seems to affect low and poor means. Through the years and the centuries, through evil agents, through toys and atoms, a great and beneficent tendency irresistibly streams.

In good company, the individuals merge their egotism into a social soul exactly co-extensive with the several consciousnesses there present.

Natural religion supplies still all the facts which are disguised under the dogma of popular creeds. The progress of religion is steadily to its identity with morals.

We pray to be conventional. But the wary Heaven takes care you shall not be, if there is anything good in you. Dante was very badcompany, and was never invited to dinner.

No man thoroughly understands a truth until he has contended against it.