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.

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

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.

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.

I cannot think the disputes and jealousies of Heaven are tried and settled by the swords of earth.

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.

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