“Earnestness is the salt of eloquence.”

“Kings are for nations in their swaddling-clothes: France has attained her majority.”

“In the vast cosmical changes, the universal life comes and goes in unknown quantities, ... sowing an animalcule here, crumbling a star there, oscillating and ... entangling, from the highest to the lowest, all activities in the obscurity of a dizzying mechanism, hanging the flight of an insect upon the movement of the earth... Enormous gearing, whose first motor is the gnat, and whose last wheel is the zodiac.”

“The poetic element lying hidden in most women is the source of their magnetic attraction.”

“Genius is a promontory jutting out into the infinite.”

“Water the fruit trees and don’t water the thorns.”

“If you do not possess the staff of caution and discrimination, use the eyes of him who sees. If there is no staff of caution and discrimination, do not wander on the road without a guide.”

“To be able to discern that what is true is true, and that what is false is false,--this is the mark and character of intelligence.”