But probably every age gets, within certain limits, the science it deserves.

Man's conquest of Nature turns out, in the moment of its consummation, to be Nature's conquest of Man.

You cannot make men good by law: and without good men you cannot have a good society.

I have received no assurance that anything we can do will eradicate suffering. I think the best results are obtained by people who work quietly away at limited objectives, such as the abolition of the slave trade, or prison reform, or factory acts, or tuberculosis, not by those who think they can achieve universal justice, or health, or peace. I think the art of life consists in tackling each immediate evil as well as we can.

The mold in which a key is made would be a strange thing, if you had never seen a key: and the key itself a strange thing if you had never seen a lock. Your soul has a curious shape because it is a hollow made to fit a particular swelling in the infinite contours of the divine substance, or a key to unlock one of the doors in the house with many mansions. Your place in heaven will seem to be made for you and you alone, because you were made for it -- made for it stitch by stitch as a glove is made for a hand.

When golden moments come, when God enables one really to pray without words, who but a fool would reject the gift?

Literary experience heals the wound, without undermining the privilege, of individuality.