No living person is sunk so low as not to be imitated by somebody.

There is an organic affinity between joyousness and tenderness, and their companionship in the saintly life need in no way occasion surprise.

The mind, in short, works on the data it receives very much as a sculptor works on his block of stone. In a sense the statue stoodthere from eternity. But there were a thousand different ones beside it, and the sculptor alone is to thank for having extricated this one from the rest.

The 'I think' which Kant said must be able to accompany all my objects, is the 'I breathe' which actually does accompany them.

What excites and interests the looker-on at life, what the romances and the statues celebrate, and the grim civic monuments remind us of, is the everlasting battle of the powers of light with those of darkness; with heroism reduced to its bare chance, yet ever and anon snatching victory from the jaws of death.

To give up pretensions is as blessed a relief as to get them ratified.

The history of philosophy is to a great extent that of a certain clash of human temperaments.