The essence of true nobility is neglect of self. Let the thought of self pass in, and the beauty of a great action is gone, like the bloom from a soiled flower.

Wild animals never kill for sport. Man is the only one to whom the torture and death of his fellow creatures is amusing in itself.

You cannot dream yourself into a character; you must hammer and forge yourself one.

Of all the evil spirits abroad at this hour in the world, insincerity is the most dangerous.

Crime is not punished as an offense against God, but as prejudicial to society.

There are at bottom but two possible religions--that which rises in the moral nature of man, and which takes shape in moral commandments, and that which grows out of the observation of the material energies which operate in the external universe.

Mistakes are often the best teachers.