The true purpose of education is to cherish and unfold the seed of immortality already sown within us.

Occupation was one of the pleasures of paradise, and we cannot be happy without it.

To reason from analogy is often dangerous, but to illustrate by a fanciful analogy is sometimes a means by which we light an idea, as it were, into the understanding of another.

Nature and truth are one, and immutable, and inseparable as beauty and love.

A man may be as much a fool from the want of sensibility as the want of sense.

Even virtue itself, all perfect as it is, requires to be inspirited by passion; for duties are but coldly performed which are but philosophically fulfilled.

Social opinion is like a sharp knife. There are foolish people who regard it only with terror, and dare not touch or meddle with it. There are more foolish people, who, in rashness or defiance, seize it by the blade, and get cut and mangled for their pains. And there are wise people, who grasp it discreetly and boldly by the handle, and use it to carve out their own purposes.