Oblivion is the dark page, whereon Memory writes her light-beam characters, and makes them legible; were it all light, nothing could be read there, any more than if it were all darkness.

I call that [Book of Job], apart from all theories about it, one of the grandest things ever written with pen.

The Ideal is in thyself, the impediments too is in thyself.

What is philosophy but a continual battle against custom?

A person who is gifted sees the essential point and leaves the rest as surplus.

He that has a secret should not only hide it, but hide that he has it to hide.

The first purpose of clothes... was not warmth or decency, but ornament.... Among wild people, we find tattooing and painting even prior to clothes. The first spiritual want of a barbarous man is decoration; as indeed we still see among the barbarous classes in civilized countries.