“It is a small soul, buried beneath the weight of affairs, that does not know how to get clean away from them, that cannot put them aside and pick them up again.”

“For I make others say what I cannot say so well,... I do not count my borrowings, but, weight them.... They are all, or very nearly all, from such famous and ancient names that they seem to identify themselves enough without me. ”

“I know that the arms of friendship are long enough to reach from the one end of the world to the other”

“The beautiful souls are they that are unniversal, open, and ready for all things.”

“People try to get out of themselves and to escape from the man. This is folly; instead of transforming themselves into angels, they turn into beast; instead of lifting, they degrade themselves. These transcendental humors frighten me, like lofty and inaccessible heights.”

“Man is certainly stark mad; he cannot make a worm, and yet he will be making gods by dozens.”

“No man is exempt from saying silly things; the mischief is to say them deliberately.”