I give you joy of your free and brave thought. I have great joy in it. I find incomparable things said incomparably well, as they must be. I find the courage of treatment which so delights us, and which large perception only can inspire.

The uses of travel are occasional, and short; but the best fruit it finds, when it finds it, is conversation; and this is a main function of life.

Foolish consistencies are the hobgoblins of small minds!

What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think.

Every chair should be a throne and hold a king.

For everything you have missed, you have gained something else, and for everything you gain, you lose something else.

He cumbers himself never about consequences, about interests; he gives an independent, genuine verdict. You must court him: he does not court you. But the man is, as it were, clapped into jail by his consciousness.