Conscience is its own readiest accuser.

No piled-up wealth, no social station, no throne, reaches as high as that spiritual plane upon which every human being stands by virtue of his humanity.

Whatever may be our condition in life, it is better to lay hold of its advantages than to count its evils.

I should not like to preach to a congregation who all believed as I believe. I would as lief preach to a basket of eggs in their smooth compactness and oval formality.

I know a good many people, I think, who are bigots, and who know they are bigots, and are sorry for it, but they dare not be anything else.

The essence of justice is mercy. Making a child suffer for wrong-doing is merciful to the child. There is no mercy in letting the child have its own will, plunging headlong to destruction with the bits in its mouth. There is no mercy to society nor to the criminal if the wrong is not repressed and the right vindicated. We injure the culprit who comes up to take his proper doom at the bar of justice, if we do not make him feel that he has done a wrong thing. We may deliver his body from the prison, but not at the expense of justice nor to his own injury.

It is as bad to clip conscience as to clip coin; it is as bad to give a counterfeit statement as a counterfeit bill.