We do not believe in immortality because we can't prove it, but we try to prove it because we cannot help believing it.

The last thing it [government] ought to do is to ground its proceedings on the ignorance of the people, - to yield them that which they will hereafter despise the donors for granting them.

Happiness consists in the full employment of our faculties in some pursuit.

What office is there which involves more responsibility, which requires more qualifications, and which ought, therefore, to be more honorable, than that of teaching?

Goodness and simplicity are indissolubly united.-The bad are the most sophisticated, all the world over, and the good the least.

The highest condition of the religious sentiment is when. . . the worshiper not only sees God everywhere, but sees nothing which is not full of God.

My business in life has been to think and learn, and to speak out with absolute freedom what I have thought and learned. The freedom is itself a positive and never-failing enjoyment to me, after the bondage of my early life.