Periods of tranquillity are seldom prolific of creative achievement. Mankind has to be stirred up.

There is nothing to which men, while they have food and drink, cannot reconcile themselves.

Intolerance is a form of egotism, and to condemn egotism intolerantly is to share it.

There is no dunce like a mature dunce.

Miracles are propitious accidents, the natural causes of which are too complicated to be readily understood.

Religion is indeed a convention which a man must be bred in to endure with any patience; and yet religion, for all its poetic motley, comes closer than work-a-day opinion to the heart of things.

There is nothing sweeter than to be sympathized with.