A beetle may or may not be inferior to a man — the matter awaits demonstration; but if he were inferior by ten thousand fathoms, the fact remains that there is probably a beetle view of things of which a man is entirely ignorant. If he wishes to conceive that point of view, he will scarcely reach it by persistently revelling in the fact that he is not a beetle.

The center of every man's existence is a dream.

The materialist theory of history, that all politics and ethics are the expression of economics, is a very simple fallacy indeed. It consists simply of confusing the necessary conditions of life with the normal preoccupations of life, that are quite a different thing. It is like saying that because a man can only walk about on two legs, therefore he never walks about except to buy shoes and stockings.

If a man does not talk to himself, it is because he is not worth talking to.

The doctrine of human equality reposes on this: that there is no man really clever who has not found that he is stupid.

The vulgar man is always the most distinguished, for the very desire to be distinguished is vulgar.

The real great man is the man who makes every man feel great.

Every one of the great revolutionists, from Isaiah to Shelley, have been optimists. They have been indignant, not about the badness of existence, but about the slowness of men in realizing its goodness.

The power which makes a man able to entertain a good impulse is the same as that which enables him to make a good gun; it is imagination.