Are you not scared by seeing that the gypsies are more attractive to us than the apostles?

There are dull and bright, sacred and profane, coarse and fine egotists. It is a disease that, like influenza, falls on all constitutions. In the distemper known to physicians as chorea, the patient sometimes turns round, and continues to spin slowly in one spot. Is egotism a metaphysical varioloid of this malady?

The world - this shadow of the soul, or other me - lies wide around. Its attractions are the keys which unlock my thoughts and make me acquainted with myself. I run eagerly into this resounding tumult... So much only of life as I know by experience... The true scholar grudges every opportunity of action past by, as a loss of power.

We are of different opinions at different hours, but we always may be said to be at heart on the side of truth.

The dogma of the mystic offices of Christ being dropped, and he standing on his genius as a moral teacher, 'tis impossible to maintain the old emphasis of his personality; and it recedes, as all persons must, before the sublimity of the moral laws.

A painter told me that nobody could draw a tree without in some sort becoming a tree.

Many a profound genius, I suppose, who fills the world with fame of his exploding renowned errors, is yet everyday posed and baffled by trivial questions at his own supper table.