All free governments, whatever their name, are in reality governments by public opinion ; and it is on the quality of this public opinion that their prosperity depends. It is, therefore, their first duty to purify the element from which they draw the breath of life.

Life is the jailer, death the angel sent to draw the unwilling bolts and set us free.

Many make the household but only one the home.

[B]ut in literature, it should be remembered, a thing always becomes his at last who says it best, and thus makes it his own.

A great part of human suffering has its root in the nature of man, and not in that of his institutions.

Scepticism commonly takes up the room left by defect of imagination, and is the very quality of mind most likely to seek for sensual proof of supersensual things. If one came from the dead it could not believe; and yet it longs for such a witness, and will put up with a very dubious one.

It seems to me that the bane of our country is a profession of faith either with no basis of real belief, or with no proper examination of the grounds on which the creed is supposed to rest.