There is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood bu those who hear it.

When a superior intellect and a psychopathic temperament coalesce in the same individual, we have the best possible condition for the kind of effective genius that gets into the biographical dictionaries.

Regarding mutual tolerance: It is negative in one sense, but positive in another. It absolutely forbids us to be forward in pronouncing on the meaninglessness of forms of existence other than our own; and it commands us to tolerate, respect, and indulge those whom we see harmlessly interested and happy in their own ways, however unintelligible these may be to us. Hands off.

No reception without reaction, no impression without correlative expression, -this is the great maxim which the teacher ought never to forget.

Choose a self and stand by it.

It is only by risking our persons from one hour to another that we live at all. And often enough our faith beforehand in an uncertified result is the only thing that makes the result come true.

A new idea is first condemned as ridiculous and then dismissed as trivial, until finally, it becomes what everybody knows.