Every one of us ... knows better than he practices, and recognizes a better law than he obeys.

Fear is the parent of cruelty.

A person possessed with an idea cannot be reasoned with.

Experience teaches slowly, and at the cost of mistakes.

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.

The endurance of the inequalities of life by the poor is the marvel of human society.

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.