As we refine, our checks become finer. If we rise to spiritual culture, the antagonism takes a spiritual form.

The solitary knows the essence of the thought, the scholar in society only its fair face.

We are the prisoners of ideas. They catch us up for moments into their heaven, and so fully engage us, that we take no thought forthe morrow, gaze like children, without an effort to make them our own.

Enthusiasm is the leaping lightning, not to be measured by the horse-power of the understanding

As every man is hunted by his own daemon, vexed by his own disease, this checks all his activity.

Man was born to be rich, or to inevitably grow rich, by the use of his faculties: by the union of thought with nature.

A seashell should be the crest of England, not only because it represents a power built on the waves, but also the hard finish ofthe men. The Englishman is finished like a cowry or a murex.