The vocabulary of an omniscient man would embrace words and images excluded from polite conversation. What would be base, or even obscene, to the obscene, becomes illustrious, spoken in a new connexion of thought.

Physical force has no value, where there is nothing else. Snow in snow-banks, fire in volcanoes and solfataras is cheap. The luxury of ice is in tropical countries, and midsummer days. The luxury of fire is, to have a little on our hearth; and of electricity, not the volleys of the charged cloud, but the manageable stream on the battery-wires. So of spirit, or energy; the rests or remains of it in the civil and moral man, are worth all the cannibals in the Pacific.

If we follow the truth, it will bring us out safe at last.

The true test of civilization is not the census, nor the size of cities, nor the crops - no, but the kind of man the country turns out.

I covet truth; beauty is unripe childhood's cheat; I leave it behind with the games of youth.

Without ambition one starts nothing. Without work one finishes nothing. The prize will not be sent to you. You have to win it.

General ideas are essences. They are our gods: they round and ennoble the most partial and sordid way of living.