I love those who yearn for the impossible.

The wild desires no longer win us, The deeds of passion cease to chain; The love of Man revives within us, The love of God revives again.

The world admires wealth and velocity—these are the things for which everyone strives. Railroads, the post, steamboats, and all possible modes of communication are the means by which the world overeducates itself and freezes itself in mediocrity.

If you start to think of your physical and moral condition, you usually find that you are sick.

Men get out of countenance with themselves and others because they treat the means as the end, and so, from sheer doing, do nothing, or, perhaps, just what they would have avoided.

Mathematicians are a kind of Frenchman. They translate into their own language whatever is said to them and forthwith the thing is utterly changed.

Excellence is rarely found, more rarely valued.