Fear is the parent of cruelty.

To deny the freedom of the will is to make morality impossible.

Nature is less partial than she appears, and all situations in life have their compensations along with them.

The first duty of an historian is to be on guard against his own sympathies.

Opinions alter, manners change, creeds rise and fall, but the moral law is written on the tablets of eternity. For every false word or unrighteous deed, for cruelty and oppression, for lust or vanity, the price has to be paid at last.

The superstition of science scoffs at the superstition of faith.

No person is ever good for much, that hasn't been swept off their feet by enthusiasm between ages twenty and thirty.

Man is a real man, and can live and act manfully in this world, not in the strength of opinions, not according to what he thinks, but according to what he is .

Superior strength is found in the long run to lie with those who had right on their side.

I cut a hole in my heart and wrote with the blood.

I would sooner perish for ever than stoop down before a Being who may have power to crush me, but whom my heart forbids me to reverence.

Mistakes are often the best teachers.

I cannot think the disputes and jealousies of Heaven are tried and settled by the swords of earth.

Just laws are no restraint upon the freedom of the good, for the good man desires nothing which a just law will interfere with.

Wild animals never kill for sport. Man is the only one to whom the torture and death of his fellow-creatures is amusing in itself.

In every department of life -- in its business and in its pleasures, in its beliefs and in its theories, in its material developments and in its spiritual connections -- we thank God that we are not like our fathers.

Nature is not a partisan, but out of her ample treasue house she produces children in infinite variety, of which she is equally the mother, and disowns none of them.

I could never fear a God who kept a hell prison-house. No, not though he flung me there because I refused. There is a power stronger than such a one; and it is possible to walk unscathed even in the burning furnace.

The essence of true nobility is neglect of self. Let the thought of self pass in, and the beauty of a great action is gone, like the bloom from a soiled flower.

Thirst of power and of riches now bear sway,

The passion and infirmity of age.