Men who pass most comfortably through this world are those who possess good digestions and hard hearts.

My own feeling of concern arises from seeing how much moral injury and suffering is created by the superstitions of the Christian mythology.

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.

It is not quite true that there are no good letters written in America: among my own circle of correspondents there, there are ladies and gentlemen whose letters would stand a comparison with any for frankness, grace, and epistolary beauty of every kind. But I am not aware of any medium between this excellence and the boarding-school insignificance which characterizes the rest.

Keep innocency, and take heed unto the thing that is right, for that shall bring a man peace at the last.

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

it is the worst humiliation and grievance of the suffering, that they cause suffering.