Instruction does not prevent wasted time or mistakes; and mistakes themselves are often the best teachers of all.

Science rests on reason and experiment, and can meet an opponent with calmness; [but] a creed is always sensitive.

Our human laws are but the copies, more or less imperfect, of the eternal laws, so far as we can read them.

History is a voice forever sounding across the centuries the laws of right and wrong. Opinions alter, manners change, creeds rise and fall, but the moral law is written on the tablets of eternity.

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

Men think to mend their condition by a change of circumstances. They might as well hope to escape from their shadows.

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.