In science its main worth is temporary, as a stepping-stone to something beyond. Even [Newton's] Principia ... is truly but the beginning of a natural philosophy. Co-author with his brother Julius Hare.

Christianity has carried civilization along with it, whithersoever it has gone; and, as if to show that the latter does not depend on physical causes, some of the countries the most civilized in the day's of Augustus are now in a state of hopeless barbarism.

Philosophy cannot raise the commonalty up to her level: so, if she is to become popular, she must sink to theirs.

There is as much difference between good poetry and fine verses, as between the smell of a flower-garden and of a perfumer's shop.

The effects of human wickedness are written on the page of history in characters of blood: but the impression soon fades away; so more blood must be shed to renew it.

How idle it is to call certain things God-sends! as if there was anything else in the world.

Books, as Dryden has aptly termed them, are spectacles to read nature. Aeschylus and Aristotle, Shakespeare and Bacon, are priests who preach and expound the mysteries of man and the universe. They teach us to understand and feel what we see, to decipher and syllable the hieroglyphics of the senses.