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.

A man cannot make a pair of shoes rightly unless he do it in a devout manner.

These Arabs, the man Mahomet, and that one century, - is it not as if a spark had fallen, one spark, on a world of what proves explosive powder, blazes heaven-high from Delhi to Granada! I said, the Great man was always as lightning out of Heaven; the rest of men waited for him like fuel, and then they too would flame.

Everywhere the human soul stands between a hemisphere of light and another of darkness on the confines of two everlasting empires, - Necessity and Free Will.

There is but one thing without honor, smitten with eternal barrenness, inability to do or to be,-insincerity, unbelief.

Popular opinion is the greatest lie in the world.

All deep things are song. It seems somehow the very central essence of us, song; as if all the rest were but wrappages and hulls!