Our relations to each other are oblique and casual.

A man must consider what a rich realm he abdicates when he becomes a conformist.

Beauty rests on necessities.

Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other. It undergoes continual changes: it is barbarous, it is civilized, it is rich, it is scientific; but this change is not amelioration. For every thing that is given, something else is taken. Society acquires new arts and loses old instincts.

If we live truly, we shall see truly. It is as easy for the strong man to be strong, as it is for the weak to be weak.

The religion that is afraid of science dishonors God and commits suicide.

Every really able man, in whatever direction he works - a man of large affairs, an inventor, a statesman, an orator, a poet, a painter - if you talk sincerely with him, considers his work, however much admired, as far short of what it should be. What is this Better, this flying Ideal, but the perpetual promise of his Creator?