The primary wisdom is intuition. In that deep force, the last fact behind which analysis cannot go, all things find their origin.

The eyes of men converse as much as their tongues, with the advantage that the ocular dialect needs no dictionary, but is understood all the world over.

There is properly no history, only biography.

We know truth when we see it, from opinion, as we know when we are awake that we are awake.

Shall I tell you the secret of the true scholar? It is this: every man I meet is my master in some point, and in that I learn of him.

For, though the origin of most of our words is forgotten, each word was at first a stroke of genius, and obtained currency, because for the moment it symbolized the world to the first speaker and to the hearer. The etymologist finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant picture.

Everyone I meet is in some way my superior.