I should say sincerity, a deep, great, genuine sincerity, is the first characteristic of all men in any way heroic.

It is meritorious to insist on forms; religion and all else naturally clothes itself in forms. Everywhere the formed world is the only habitable one.

Thought will not work except in silence.

With stupidity and sound digestion, man may front much.

For the superior morality, of which we hear so much, we too would desire to be thankful: at the same time, it were but blindness to deny that this superior morality is properly rather an inferior criminality, produced not by greater love of Virtue, but by greater perfection of Police; and of that far subtler and stronger Police, called Public Opinion.

The greatest mistake is to imagine that we never err.

The leafy blossoming present time springs from the whole past, remembered and unrememberable.