It is wisdom to believe the heart.

Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual.

The Bible is a wonderful source of inspiration for those who don't understand it.

The more rational an institution is the less it suffers by making concessions to others.

Wealth, religion, military victory have more rhetorical than efficacious worth.

Any attempt to speak without speaking any particular language is not more hopeless than the attempt to have a religion that shall be no religion in particular.... Every living and healthy religion has a marked idiosyncrasy. Its power consists in its special and surprising message and the bias which that revelation gives to life.

To turn events into ideas is the function of literature.