“God be thanked for books; they are the voices of the distant and the dead, and make us heirs of the spiritual life of past ages”

“Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of readiness to die”

“If I had listened to the critics I'd have died drunk in the gutter”

“To extinguish the free will is to strike the conscience with death, for both have but one and the same life”

“I affirm, and would maintain, that true religion consists in proposing, as our great end, a growing likeness to the supreme being”

“We hope to grow old, and we dread old age; that is to say, we love life and flee from death”