We must have the real thing before we can have a science of a thing.

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.

Fear is the parent of cruelty.

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.

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.

The first duty of an historian is to be on his guard against his own sympathies...