But only that soul can be my friend which I encounter on the line of my own march, that soul to which I do not decline, and which does not decline me, but, native of the same celestial latitude, repeats in its own all my experience.

But I shall hear without pain, that I play the courtier very ill, and talk of that which I do not well understand.

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.

Freedom is not the right to live as we please, but the right to find how we ought to live in order to fulfill our potential.

Man carries the world in his head, the whole astronomy and chemistry suspended in a thought. Because the history of nature is charactered in his brain, therefore he is the prophet and discoverer of her secrets. Every known fact in natural science was divined by the presentiment of somebody, before it was actually verified.

Men do not believe in the power of education. We do not think we can speak to divine sentiments in man, and we do not try. We renounce all high aims.

A man is not to aim at innocence, any more than he is to aim at hair, but he is to keep it.