"We are enabled to apprehend at all what is sublime and noble only by the perpetual instilling and firing of the idea of the beautiful into us."

"As for conforming outwardly, and living your own life inwardly, I do not think much of that."

"I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society."

"If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them."

"I would rather be a wood-chopper than a professor of ethics."