There is something splendid about innocence; but what is bad about it, in turn, is that it cannot protect itself very well and is easily seduced.

The sceptics, a kind of nomads, despising all settled culture of the land, broke up from time to time all civil society. Fortunately their number was small, and they could not prevent the old settlers from returning to cultivate the ground afresh, though without any fixed plan or agreement.

Thrift is care and scruple in the spending of one's means. It is not a virtue and it requires neither skill nor talent.

An organized product of nature is that in which all the parts are mutually ends and means.

The question is not so much whether there is life on Mars as whether it will continue to be possible to live on Earth

The enjoyment of power inevitably corrupts the judgment of reason, and perverts its liberty.

At some future day it will be proved, I cannot say when and where, that the human soul is, while in earth life, already in an uninterrupted communication with those living in another world.