In every object there is inexhaustible meaning.

What is philosophy but a continual battle against custom?

It is no very good symptom, either of nations or individuals, that they deal much in vaticination. Happy men are full of the present, for its bounty suffices them; and wise men also, for its duties engage them. Our grand business undoubtedly is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what clearly lies at hand.

One seems to believe almost all that they believe; and when they stop short and call it a Religion, and you pass on, and call it only a reminiscence of one, should you not part with the kiss of peace?

The end of Man is an Action, and not a Thought, though it were the noblest?

At the bottom there is no perfect history; there is none such conceivable. All past centuries have rotted down, and gone confusedly dumb and quiet.

Instead of saying that man is the creature of circumstance, it would be nearer the mark to say that man is the architect of circumstance.