“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.”

“O! that a man might know The end of this day's business, ere it come; But it sufficeth that the day will end, And then the end is known.”

“Cease to lament for that thou canst not help; and study help for that which thou lamentest.”

“Be still prepared for death: and death or life shall thereby be the sweeter.”