The opposite of the religious fanatic is not the fanatical atheist but the gentle cynic who cares not whether there is a god or not.

It is startling to see how the oppressed almost invariably shape themselves in the image of their hated oppressors.

Even the sober desire for progress is sustained by faith—faith in the intrinsic goodness of human nature and in the omnipotence of science. It is a defiant and blasphemous faith, not unlike that held by the men who set out to build a "city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven" and who believed that "nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.

The nature of a society is largely determined by the direction in which talent and ambition flow - by the tilt of the social landscape.

To dispose a soul to action we must upset its equilibrium.

Even in slight things the experience of the new is rarely without some stirring of foreboding.

Help your sister's boat across the water, and yours too will reach the other side. Kindness can become its own motive. We are made kind by being kind.