Stuffing birds or playing stringed instruments is an elegant pastime, and a resource to the idle, but it is not education.

Egotism is true modesty. In religious enquiry each of us can speak only for himself.

Now what is it that moves our very hearts and sickens us so much at cruelty shown to poor brutes?.. They have done us no harm and they have no power of resistance... There is something so very dreadful, so Satanic, in tormenting those who have never harmed us, who cannot defend themselves, who are utterly in our power.

In this world no one rules by love; if you are but amiable, you are no hero; to be powerful, you must be strong, and to have dominion you must have a genius for organizing.

Virtue is its own reward, and brings with it the truest and highest pleasure; but if we cultivate it only for pleasure's sake, we are selfish, not religious, and will never gain the pleasure, because we can never have the virtue.

True religion is slow in growth, and, when once planted, is difficult of dislodgement; but its intellectual counterfeit has no root in itself: it springs up suddenly, it suddenly withers.

It is very difficult to get up resentment towards persons whom one has never seen.