A person whose desires and impulses are his own--are the expression of his own nature, as it has been developed and modified by his own culture--is said to have a character. One whose desires and impulses are not his own, has no character, no more than a steam-engine has character.

But though direct moral teaching does much, indirect does more; and the effect my father produced on my character, did not depend solely on what he said or did with that direct object, but also, and still more, on what manner of man he was.

He who lets the world choose his plan of life for him has need of no other faculty than that of ape-like imitation.

Precisely because the tyranny of opinion is such as to make eccentricity a reproach, it is desirable, in order to break through that tyranny, that people should be eccentric.

As for charity, it is a matter in which the immediate effect on the persons directly concerned, and the ultimate consequence to the general good, are apt to be at complete war with one another.

Men and governments must act to the best of their ability. There is no such thing as absolute certainty but there is assurance sufficient for the purposes of human life.

The general tendency of things throughout the world is to render mediocrity the ascendant power among mankind.

A great statesman is he who knows when to depart from traditions, as well as when to adhere to them.

The dictum that truth always triumphs over persecution is one of the pleasant falsehoods which men repeat after one another till they pass into commonplaces, but which all experience refutes.

Whatever helps to shape the human being -- to make the individual what he is, or hinder him from being what he is not -- is part of his education.

In all intellectual debates, both sides tend to be correct in what they affirm, and wrong in what they deny.

A person may cause evil to others not only by his actions but by his inaction, and in either case he is justly accountable to them for the injury.

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse.

In this age, the mere example of nonconformity, the mere refusal to bend the knee to custom, is itself a service.

We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavoring to stifle is a false opinion; and if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still.

All action is for the sake of some end; and rules of action, it seems natural to suppose, must take their whole character and color from the end to which they are subservient.

Solitude in the presence of natural beauty and grandeur is the cradle of thought and aspirations which are not only good for the individual, but which society can ill do without.

I will call no being good who is not what I mean when I apply that epithet to my fellow creatures; and if such a creature can sentence me to hell for not so calling him, to hell I will go .

Truth emerges from the clash of adverse ideas.

Every great movement must experience three stages: ridicule, discussion, adoption.