Where nature is sovereign, there is no need of austerity and self-denial.

Science rests on reason and experiment, and can meet an opponent with calmness; [but] a creed is always sensitive.

The moral system of the universe is like a document written in alternate ciphers, which change from line to line.

In every department of life--in its business and in its pleasures, in its beliefs and in its theories, in its material developments and in its spiritual connections--we thank God that we are not like our fathers.

Beautiful is old age—beautiful as the slow-dropping mellow autumn of a rich glorious summer. In the old man, Nature has fulfilled her work; she loads him with blessings; she fills him with the fruits of a well-spent life; and, surrounded by his children and his children's children, she rocks him softly away to a grave, to which he is followed with blessings. God forbid we should not call it beautiful.

Men are made by nature unequal. It is vain, therefore, to treat them as if they were equal.

The practical effect of a belief is the real test of its soundness. Where we find a heroic life appearing as the uniform fruit of a particular mode of opinion, it is childish to argue in the face of fact that the result ought to have been different.