What matters it? say some, a little more knowledge for man, a little more liberty, a little more general development. Life is so short! He is a being so limited! But it is precisely because his days are few, and he cannot attain to all, that a little more culture is of importance to him. The ignorance in which God leaves man is divine; the ignorance in which man leaves himself is a crime and a shame.—X. Doudan.
Revolutions never go backwards.—Emerson.
What pains and tears the slightest steps of man's progress have cost! Every hair-breadth forward has been in the agony of some soul, and humanity has reached blessing after blessing of all its vast achievement of good with bleeding feet.—Bartol.
Progress is lame.—St. Bueve.
We know what a masquerade all development is, and what effective shapes may be disguised in helpless embryos. In fact, the world is full of hopeful analogies and handsome dubious eggs called possibilities.—George Eliot.
The pathway of progress will still, as of old, bear the traces of martyrdom, but the advance is inevitable.—G. H. Lewes.
Nations are educated through suffering, mankind is purified through sorrow. The power of creating obstacles to progress is human and partial. Omnipotence is with the ages.—Mazzini.
Every age has its problem, by solving which, humanity is helped forward.—Heinrich Heine.
Men of great genius and large heart sow the seeds of a new degree of progress in the world, but they bear fruit only after many years.—Mazzini.
It is curious to note the old sea-margins of human thought. Each subsiding century reveals some new mystery; we build where monsters used to hide themselves.—Longfellow.