Curiosity is a gift, a capacity of pleasure in knowing, which if you destroy, you make yourself cold and dull.

Superstition, in all times and among all nations, is the fear of a spirit whose passions are those of a man, whose acts are the acts of a man; who is present in some places, not in others; who makes no places holy and not others; who is kind to one person, unkind to another; who is pleased or angry according to the degree of attention you pay him, or praise you refuse to him; who is hostile generally to human pleasure, but may be bribed by sacrifice of a part of that pleasure into permitting the rest. This, whatever form of faith it colors, is the essence of superstition.

An infinitude of tenderness is the chief gift and inheritance of all truly great men.

Once thoroughly our own, the knowledge ceases to give us pleasure.

Absolute ugliness is admitted as rarely as perfect beauty; but degrees of it more or less distinct are associated with whatever has the nature of death and sin, just as beauty is associated with what has the nature of virtue and of life.

The question is not what man can scorn, or disparage, or find fault with, but what he can love, and value, and appreciate.

In the utmost solitudes of nature, the existence of hell seems to me as legibly declared by a thousand spiritual utterances as that of heaven.