We pass for what we are.

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.

Nature is upheld by antagonism. Passions, resistance, danger, are educators. We acquire the strength we have overcome.

Tragedy is in the eye of the observer, and not in the heart of the sufferer.

No man has a right perception of any truth, who has not been reacted on by it, so as to be ready to be its martyr.

The most advanced nations are always those who navigate the most. The power which the sea requires in the sailor makes a man of him very fast, and the change of shores and population clears his head of much nonsense of his wigwam.

When a man becomes a conformist, he is sacrificing the richness of independent thinking.