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.

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

Nature is not a partisan, but out of her ample treasue house she produces children in infinite variety, of which she is equally the mother, and disowns none of them.

Justice without wisdom is impossible.

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

There are at bottom but two possible religions--that which rises in the moral nature of man, and which takes shape in moral commandments, and that which grows out of the observation of the material energies which operate in the external universe.

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.