We have lost the power even of imagining what the ancient idealization of poverty could have meant: the liberation from material attachments, the unbribed soul, the manlier indifference, the paying our way by what we are and not by what we have, the right to fling away our life at any moment irresponsibly - the more athletic trim, in short, the moral fighting shape.

Touch is the alpha and omega of affection.

The perfection of rottenness.

I will act as if I do make a difference.

The man who knows governments most completely is he who troubles himself least about a definition which shall give their essence. Enjoying an intimate acquaintance with all their particularities in turn, he would naturally regard an abstract conception in which these were unified as a thing more misleading than enlightening.

Truth is one species of good, and not, as is usually supposed, a category distinct from good, and co-ordinate with it

The greatest empiricists among us are only empiricists on reflection: when left to their instincts, they dogmatize like infallible popes.