Where Church and State are habitually associated, it is natural that minds, even of a high order, should unconsciously come to regard religion as only a subtler mode of police.

There is nothing so desperately monotonous as the sea, and I no longer wonder at the cruelty of pirates.

This imputation of inconsistency is one to which every sound politician and every honest thinker must sooner or later subject himself. The foolish and the dead alone never change their opinion.

It is not without reason that fame is awarded only after death. The cloud-dust of notoriety which follows and envelops the men who drive with the wind bewilders contemporary judgment.

Better one bite at forty, of truths bitter rind, than the hot wine that gushed from the vintage of twenty.

Truth, after all, wears a different face to everybody, and it would be too tedious to wait till all were agreed.

Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne.