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.

Human improvement is from within outward.

The best that we can do for one another is to exchange our thoughts freely; and that, after all, is about all.

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.

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.

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

There are epidemics of nobleness as well as epidemics of disease.