Conservatism, ever more timorous and narrow, disgusts the children, and drives them for a mouthful of fresh air into radicalism.

Let none presume to measure the irregularities of Michael Angelo or Socrates by village scales.

Great men do not content us. It is their solitude, not their force, that makes them conspicuous.

The world is his who can see through its pretension.

I wish the days to be as centuries, loaded, fragrant. Now we reckon them as bank-days, by some debt which is to be paid us, or which we are to pay, or some pleasure we are to taste.

The spirit of the world, the great calm presence of the creator, comes not forth to the sorceries of opium or of wine.

It's a luxury to be understood.