To reform means to shatter one form and to create another; but the two sides of this act are not always equally intended nor equally successful.

A fanatical imagination cannot regard God as just unless he is represented as infinitely cruel.

To substitute judgments of fact for judgments of value is a sign of pedantic and borrowed criticism.

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.

Unmitigated seriousness is always out of place in human affairs.

Every real object must cease to be what it seemed, and none could ever be what the whole soul desired.

Boston was a moral and intellectual nursery, always busy applying first principles to trifles.