Must love be ever treated with profaneness as a mere illusion? or with coarseness as a mere impulse? or with fear as a mere disease? or with shame as a mere weakness? or with levity as a mere accident? whereas it is a great mystery and a great necessity, lying at the foundation of human existence, morality, and happiness,--mysterious, universal, inevitable as death.

Laws and customs may be creative of vice; and should be therefore perpetually under process of observation and correction: but laws and customs cannot be creative of virtue: they may encourage and help to preserve it; but they cannot originate it.

I never did a right thing or abstained from a wrong one from any consideration of reward or punishment.

It is my deliberate opinion that the one essential requisite of human welfare in all ways is scientific knowledge of human nature.

The clergy complain of the enormous spread of bold books, from the infidel tract to the latest handling of the miracle question.

I would not exchange my freedom from old superstition, if I were to be burned at the stake next month, for all the peace and quiet of orthodoxy, if I must take the orthodoxy with peace and quiet.

If a test of civilization be sought, none can be so sure as the condition of that half of society over which the other half has power.