Never yet were the feelings and instincts of our nature violated with impunity; never yet was the voice of conscience silenced without retribution.

In morals, what begins in fear usually ends in wickedness; in religion, what begins in fear usually ends in fanaticism. Fear, either as a principle or a motive, is the beginning of all evil.

Accuracy of language is one of the bulwarks of truth.

Reputation being essentially contemporaneous, is always at the mercy of the Envious and the Ignorant. But Fame, whose very birth is posthumous, and which is only known to exist by the echo of its footsteps through congenial minds, can neither be increased nor diminished by any degree of wilfulness.

In our relations with the people around us, we forgive them more readily for what they do, which they can help, than for what they are, which they cannot help.

As the eye becomes blinded by fashion to positive deformity, so, through social conventionalism, the conscience becomes blinded to positive immorality.

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