Man and his deed are two distinct things. Whereas a good deed should call forth approbation and a wicked deed dis-approbation, the doer of the deed, whether good or wicked always deserves respect or pity as the case may be. Hate the sin and not the sinner is a precept which though easy enough to understand is rarely practised, and that is why the poison of hatred spreads in the world.
Constancy will always be the genius of love, the indication of that strength which constitutes the poet. A man should possess all women in his wife, like those squalid poetasters of the seventeenth century who made fair Irises and dazzling Chloes of their lowly Manons.
The intellectual man requires a fine bait; the sots are easily amused. But everybody is drugged with his own frenzy, and the pageant marches at all hours, with music and banner and badge.
The action of the soul is oftener in that which is felt and left unsaid than in that which is said in any conversation. It broods over every society, and men unconsciously seek for it in each other.
Innate ideas are in every man, born with him; they are truly himself. The man who says that we have no innate ideas must be a fool and knave, having no conscience or innate science.
Nothing is more stimulating and more salutary to (or for) the inner (or inward) development than the exemple of men devoted to the good. It is in the company of men pursuing a same ideal that the still weavering (or unsteady) soul can set oneself ("se fixer", Fr) and stick to (or attach to) everything that is noble and generous.
Do you know that the tendrils of graft and corruption have become mighty interlacing roots so that even men who would like to be honest are tripped and trapped by them?
A man must thank his defects, and stand in some terror of his talents. A transcendent talent draws so largely on his forces as tolame him; a defect pays him revenues on the other side.
Thus violent deeds live after men upon the earth, and traces of war and bloodshed will survive in mournful shapes long after those who worked the desolation are but atoms of earth themselves.
These are my politics: to change what we can; to better what we can; but still to bear in mind that man is but a devil weakly fettered by some generous beliefs and impositions; and for no word however sounding, and no cause however just and pious, to relax the stricture on these bonds.