A system in which the two great commandments are to hate your neighbor and to love your neighbor's wife.

Beards in olden times, were the emblems of wisdom and piety.

Those who seem to load the public taste are, in general, merely outrunning it in the direction which it is spontaneously pursuing.

I have not the smallest doubt that, if we had a purely democratic government here, the effect would be the same. Either the poor would plunder the rich, and civilisation would perish; or order and property would be saved by a strong military government, and liberty would perish.

The study of the properties of numbers, Plato tells us, habituates the mind to the contemplation of pure truth, and raises us above the material universe. He would have his disciples apply themselves to this study, not that they may be able to buy or sell, not that they may qualify themselves to be shopkeepers or travelling merchants, but that they may learn to withdraw their minds from the ever-shifting spectacle of this visible and tangible world, and to fix them on the immutable essences of things.

That wonderful book, while it obtains admiration from the most fastidious critics, is loved by those who are too simple to admire it.

Our estimate of a character always depends much on the manner in which that character affects our own interests and passions.