It is more blessed to give than to receive, but then it is also more blessed to be able to do without than to have to have.

Human justice is very prolix, and yet at times quite mediocre; divine justice is more concise and needs no information from the prosecution, no legal papers, no interrogation of witnesses, but makes the guilty one his own informer and helps him with eternity's memory.

If anyone on the verge of action should judge himself according to the outcome, he would never begin.

One could construe the life of man as a great discourse in which the various people represent different parts of speech (the same might apply to states).

Why I so much prefer autumn to spring is that in the autumn one looks at heaven--in the spring at the earth.

Had I to carve an inscription on my tombstone I would ask for none other than "The Individual."

Knowledge is an attitude, a passion, actually an illicit attitude. For the compulsion to know is like dipsomania, erotomania, and homicidal mania, in producing a character that is out of balance. It is not at all that the scientist goes after the truth.