To say that we have a clear conscience is to utter a solecism; had we never sinned we should have had no conscience. Were defeat unknown, neither would victory be celebrated by songs of triumph.

It is not to taste sweet things; but to do noble and true things, and vindicate himself under God's heaven as a God-made man, that the poorest son of Adam dimly longs. Show him the way of doing that, the dullest day-drudge kindles into a hero. They wrong man greatly who say he is to be seduced by ease. Difficulty, abnegation, martyrdom, death, are the allurements that act on the heart of man. Kindle the inner genial life of him, you have a flame that burns up all lower considerations.

Not on morality, but on cookery, let us build our stronghold: there brandishing our frying-pan, as censer, let us offer sweet incense to the Devil, and live at ease on the fat things he has provided for his elect!

Beautiful it is, and a gleam from the same eternal pole-star visible amid the destinies of men, that all talent, all intellect, is in the first plane moral. What a world were this otherwise!

The merit of originality is not novelty; it is sincerity.

Metaphysics is the attempt of the mind to rise above the mind.

Culture is the process by which a person becomes all that they were created capable of being.