Our first ideas of life are generally taken from fiction rather than fact.

That the outer man is a picture of the inner, and the face an expression and revelation of the whole character, is a presumption likely enough in itself, and therefore a safe one to go on; borne out as it is by the fact that people are always anxious to see anyone who has made himself famous. Photography offers the most complete satisfaction of our curiosity.

Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.

To free a person from error is to give, and not to take away.

Natural abilities can almost compensate for the want of every kind of cultivation, but no cultivation of the mind can make up for the want of natural abilities.

The fundament upon which all our knowledge and learning rests is the inexplicable.

The man never feels the want of what it never occurs to him to ask for.

Great minds are related to the brief span of time during which they live as great buildings are to a little square in which they stand: you cannot see them in all their magnitude because you are standing too close to them.

If we were not all so excessively interested in ourselves, life would be so uninteresting that none of us would be able to endure it.

Style is what gives value and currency to thoughts.