When we perceive any object of a familiar kind, much of what appears subjectively to be immediately given is really derived from past experience.

The wise man will be as happy as circumstances permit, and if he finds the contemplation of the universe painful beyond a point, he will contemplate something else instead.

[There has been] every kind of cruelty practiced upon all sorts of people in the name of religion.

The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt. Even those of the intelligent who believe that they have a nostrum are too individualistic to combine with other intelligent men from whom they differ on minor points.

Thinking you know when in fact you don't is a fatal mistake, to which we are all prone

What is new in our time is the increased power of the authorities to enforce their prejudices.

A word is used "correctly" when the average hearer will be affected by it in the way intended. This is a psychological, not a literary, definition of "correctness". The literary definition would substitute, for the average hearer, a person of high education living a long time ago; the purpose of this definition is to make it difficult to speak or write correctly.