In the long-run, the best proof of a good character is good actions.

A person whose desires and impulses are his own - are the expression of his own nature, as it has been developed and modified by his own culture - is said to have a character. One whose desires and impulses are not his own, has no character, no more than a steam-engine has character.

The price paid for intellectual pacification is the sacrifice of the entire moral courage of the human mind.

Next to selfishness the principal cause which makes life unsatisfactory is want of mental cultivation.

The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good, in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it.

God is a word to express, not our ideas, but the want of them.

He who knows only his own side of the case (argument) knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion