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

What is called virtue in the common sense of the word has nothing to do with this or that man's prosperity, or even happiness.

Those who seek for something more than happiness in this world must not complain if happiness is not their portion.

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.

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

Ignorance is the dominion of absurdity.

English character and English freedom depend comparatively little on the form which the Constitution assumes at Westminster. A centralised democracy may be as tyrannical as an absolute monarch; and if the vigour of the nation is to continue unimpaired, each individual, each family, each district, must preserve as far as possible its independence, its self-completeness, its powers and its privilege to manage its own affairs and think its own thoughts.