It is an esoteric doctrine of society, that a little wickedness is good to make muscle; as if conscience were not good for hands and legs.

I cannot often enough say, that a man is only a relative and representative nature. Each is a hint of the truth, but far enough from being that truth, which yet he quite newly and inevitably suggests to us. If I seek it in him, I shall not find it.

Speech is power: speech is to persuade, to convert, to compel. It is to bring another out of his bad sense into your good sense.

'Tis a short sight to limit our faith in laws to those of gravity, of chemistry, of botany, and so forth. Those laws do not stop where our eyes lose them, but push the same geometry and chemistry up into the invisible plane of social and rational life, so that, look where we will, in a boy's game, or in the strifes of races, a perfect reaction, a perpetual judgment keeps watch and ward.

There is a kind of latent omniscience, not only in every man, but in every particle.

The aid we can give each other is only incidental, lateral, and sympathetic.

Give me insight into today and you may have the antique and future worlds.