We are not altogether here to tolerate. We are here to resist, to control and vanquish withal.

I came hither [Craigenputtoch] solely with the design to simplify my way of life and to secure the independence through which I could be enabled to remain true to myself.

Alas! we know that ideals can never be completely embodied in practice. Ideals must ever lie a great way off--and we will thankfully content ourselves with any not intolerable approximation thereto! Let no man, as Schiller says, too querulously "measure by a scale of perfection the meager product of reality" in this poor world of ours.

Conviction is worthless unless it is converted into conduct.

I grow daily to honour facts more and more, and theory less and less. A fact, it seems to me, is a great thing; a sentence printed, if not by God, then at least by the Devil.

It is a vain hope to make people happy by politics.

Thought once awakened does not again slumber; unfolds itself into a System of Thought; grows, in man after man, generation after generation, - till its full stature is reached, and such System of Thought can grow no farther, but must give place to another.