Commerce is of trivial import; love, faith, truth of character, the aspiration of man, these are sacred.

Man Thinking must not be subdued by his instruments. Books are for the scholar's idle times. When he can read God directly, the hour is too precious to be wasted in other men's transcripts of their readings.

Every sweet has its sour; every evil its good.

There is no one who does not exaggerate. In conversation, men are encumbered with personality, and talk too much.

...most men have bound their eyes with one or another handkerchief, and attached themselves to some one of these communities of opinion. This conformity makes them not false in a few particulars, authors of a few lies, but false in all particulars. Their every truth is not quite true. Their two is not the real two, their four not the real four; so that every word they say chagrins us, and we know not where to begin to set them right.

A philosopher must be more than a philosopher.

The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.