I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions

I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions.

The life of man is the true romance, which when it is valiantly conduced, will yield the imagination a higher joy than any fiction.

It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

The only sin we never forgive each other is difference of opinion.

Public opinion, I am sorry to say, will bear a great deal of nonsense. There is scarcely any absurdity so gross, whether in religion, politics, science or manners, which it will not bear.