There is never vulgarity in a whole truth, however commonplace. It may be unimportant or painful. It cannot be vulgar. Vulgarity is only in concealment of truth, or in affectation.

Punishment is the last and the least effective instrument in the hands of the legislator for the prevention of crime.

It is not how much one makes but to what purpose one spends.

People are eternally divided into two classes, the believer, builder, and praiser...and the unbeliever, destroyer and critic.

All that is good in art is the expression of one soul talking to another, and is precious according to the greatness of the soul that utters it.

Geology does better in reclothing dry bones and revealing lost creations, than in tracing veins of lead and beds of iron; astronomy better in opening to us the houses of heaven than in teaching navigation; surgery better in investigating organiation than in setting limbs; only it is ordained that, for our encouragement, every step we make in science adds something to its practical applicabilities.

One evening, when I was yet in my nurse's arms, I wanted to touch the tea urn, which was boiling merrily ... My nurse would have taken me away from the urn, but my mother said "Let him touch it." So I touched it - and that was my first lesson in the meaning of liberty.