If we have never been amazed by the very fact that we exist, we are squandering the greatest fact of all.

The world wisely prefers happiness to wisdom.

The only real revolution is in the enlightenment of the mind and the improvement of character, the only real emancipation is individual, and the only real revolutionists are philosophers and saints.

The failure of the Reformation to capture France had left for Frenchmen no half-way house between infallibility and infidelity; and while the intellect of Germany and England moved leisurely in the lines of religious evolution, the mind of France leaped from the hot faith which had massacred the Huguenots to the cold hostility with which La Mettrie, Helvetius, Holbach, and Diderot turned upon the religion of the fathers.

Philosophy is harmonized knowledge making a harmonious life; it is the self-discipline which lifts us to serenity and freedom. Knowledge is power, but only wisdom is liberty.

Woe to him who teaches men faster than they can learn.

Contentment is rare among men as it is natural among animals