To tell men that they cannot help themselves is to fling them into recklessness and despair.

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.

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.

A person possessed with an idea cannot be reasoned with.

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

We cannot live on probabilities. The faith in which we can live bravely and die in peace must be a certainty, so far as it professes to be a faith at all, or it is nothing.

Nature is less partial than she appears, and all situations in life have their compensations along with them.