Men's actions are too strong for them. Show me a man who has acted, and who has not been the victim and slave of his action.

A certain awkwardness marks the use of borrowed thoughts; but as soon as we have learned what to do with them, they become our own.

The university must be retrospective. The gale that gives direction to the vanes on all its towers blows out of antiquity.

Consistency is the bugbear that frightens little minds.

What matters most is not what is behind us or before us, but what is within us.

We say that every man is entitled to be valued by his best moment. We measure our friends so. We know, they have intervals of folly, whereof we take no heed, but wait the reappearings of the genius, which are sure and beautiful.

The modernness of all good books seems to give men an existence as wide as man.