As an innovation... the establishment of Free Schools was the boldest ever promulgated, since the commencement of the Christian era... Time has ratified its soundness. Two centuries proclaim it to be as wise as it was courageous, as beneficient as it was disinterested. It was one of those grand mental and moral experiments... The sincerity of our gratitude must be tested by our efforts to perpetuate and improve what they established. The gratitude of the lips only is an unholy offering.

Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.

There is a deeper pleasure in following truth to the scaffold or the cross, than in joining the multitudinous retinue, and mingling our shouts with theirs, when victorious error celebrates its triumphs.

He who cannot resist temptation is not a man. Whoever yields to temptation debases himself with a debasement from which he can never arise.

Patient perseverance in well doing is infinitely harder than a sudden and impulsive self-sacrifice.

Thank Heaven, the female heart is untenantable by atheism.

Superiority to circumstances is one of the most prominent characteristics of great men.