Economy does not consist in saving the coal, but in using the time while it burns.

Everything that is popular, it has been said, deserves the attention of philosophers: and this is for the obvious reason, that although it may not be of any worth in itself, yet it characterizes the people.

Converse with a mind that is grandly simple, and literature looks like word-catching. The simplest utterances are worthiest to bewritten, yet are they so cheap, and so things of course, that, in the infinite riches of the soul, it is like gathering a few pebbles off the ground, or bottling a little air in a phial, when the whole earth and the whole atmosphere are ours.

Nothing great ever happened without enthusiasm.

What is civilization? I answer, the power of good women.

Man is a stream whose source is hidden. Our being is descending into us from we know not whence.

The Americans have no faith, they rely on the power of a dollar; they are deaf to sentiment.