“The longest day must have its close -the gloomiest night will wear on to a morning. An eternal, inexorable lapse of moments is ever hurrying the day of the evil to an eternal night, and the night of the just to an eternal day
“It is vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquility; they must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it
“The boundary between civilization and barbarism is difficult to draw: put one ring in your nose and you are a savage, put two rings in your ears and you are civilized.
“Everything has been said, and we have come too late, now that men have been living and thinking for seven thousand years and more
“There are only three events in a man's life; birth, life, and death; he is not conscious of being born, he dies in pain, and he forgets to live
“Every human being has a work to carry on within, duties to perform abroad, influence to exert, which are peculiarly his, and which no conscience but his own can teach
“Life does not agree with philosophy: There is no happiness that is not idleness, and only what is useless is pleasurable
“All conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone you leave them as they are. But you do not. If you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of change
“Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of readiness to die
“Every act of will is an act of self-limitation. To desire action is to desire limitation. In that sense, every act is an act of self-sacrifice. When you choose anything, you reject everything else
“The fatal metaphor of progress, which means leaving things behind us, has utterly obscured the real idea of growth, which means leaving things inside us.
“Reason is the life of the law; nay, the common law itself is nothing else but reason - the law which is perfection of reason
“It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change
“At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace the savage races throughout the world
“We are sinful not only because we have eaten of the Tree of Knowledge, but also because we have not yet eaten of the Tree of Life. The state in which we are is sinful, irrespective of guilt.
“How absurd men are! They never use the liberties they have, they demand those they do not have. They have freedom of thought, they demand freedom of speech.