Secrecy is the element of all goodness; even virtue, even beauty is mysterious.
Men seldom, or rather never for a length of time and deliberately, rebel against anything that does not deserve rebelling against.
Originality is a thing we constantly clamour for, and constantly quarrel with.
One must verify or expel his doubts, and convert them into the certainty of Yes or NO.
Speech is human, silence is divine, yet also brutish and dead: therefore we must learn both arts.
Woe to him that claims obedience when it is not due; woe to him that refuses it when it is.
To us also, through every star, through every blade of grass, is not God made visible if we will open our minds and our eyes.
There is a great discovery still to be made in literature, that of paying literary men by the quantity they do not write.
The cut of a garment speaks of intellect and talent and the color of temperament and heart.
No sadder proof can be given by a man of his own littleness than disbelief in great men.
It is a strange trade that of advocacy. Your intellect, your highest heavenly gift is hung up in the shop window like a loaded pistol for sale.
Be not a slave of words.
The real use of gunpowder is to make all men tall.
Love is the only game that is not called on account of darkness.
I don’t like to talk much with people who always agree with me. It is amusing to coquette with an echo for a little while, but one soon tires of it.
History shows that the majority of people that have done anything great have passed their youth in seclusion.
The merit of originality is not novelty; it is sincerity.
Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves together.
It is a vain hope to make people happy by politics.
Clever men are good, but they are not the best.