Self-denial does not belong to religion as characteristic of it; it belongs to human life; the lower nature must always be denied when you are trying to rise to a higher sphere.

Many men want wealth,--not a competence alone, but a live-story competence. Everything subserves this; and religion they would like as a sort of lightning-rod to their houses, to ward off by and by the bolts of Divine wrath.

It is not merely cruelty that leads men to love war, it is excitement.

Make men large and strong and tyranny will bankrupt itself in making shackles for them.

A man that is afraid is never a man.

The way to avoid evil is not by maiming our passions, but by compelling them to yield their vigor to our moral nature.

Children are the hands by which we take hold of heaven.