That cruelest of tyrants - public opinion.

Be humble, if thou would'st attain to wisdom. Be humbler still, when wisdom thou hast mastered.

The possible truths, hazily perceived in the world of abstraction, like those inferred from observation and experiment in the world of matter, are forced upon the profane multitudes, too busy to think for themselves, under the form of Divine revelation and scientific authority. But the same question stands open from the days of Socrates and Pilate down to our own age of wholesale negation: is there such a thing as absolute truth in the hands of any one party or man?

Help Nature and work on with her; and Nature will regard thee as one of her creators . . . she will lay bare before thy gaze the treasures hidden in the depths of her pure virgin bosom.

Reflect upon the defects of your character: thoroughly realize their evils and the transient pleasures they give you, and firmly will that you shall try your best not to yield to them the next time.

The whole order of nature evinces a progressive march towards a higher life.

Every one of the numberless religions and religious sects views the Deity after its own fashion; and, fathering on the unknown its own speculations, it enforces these purely human outgrowths of overheated imagination on the ignorant masses, and calls them "revelation." As the dogmas of every religion and sect often differ radically, they cannot be true. And if untrue, what are they?