Unmitigated seriousness is always out of place in human affairs.

Religions are the great fairy tales of conscience.

Half our standards come from our first masters, and the other half from our first loves.

Religion is the natural reaction of the imagination when confronted by the difficulties in a truculent world.

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

Injustice in this world is not something comparative; the wrong is deep, clear, and absolute in each private fate.

It is possible to be a master in false philosophy, easier, in fact, than to be a master in the truth, because a false philosophy can be made as simple and consistent as one pleases.