I know tolerably well what Ireland was, but have a very imperfect idea of what Ireland is.

The habit of analysis has a tendency to wear away the feelings.

The object of universities is not to make skillful lawyers, physicians or engineers. It is to make capable and cultivated human beings

Mankind are greater gainers by suffering each other to live as seems good to themselves, than by compelling each to live as seems good to the rest.

The amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and moral courage it contained. That so few now dare to be eccentric marks the chief danger of the time.

The despotism of custom is on the wane. We are not content to know that things are; we ask whether they ought to be.

Not only the grounds of the opinion are forgotten in the absence of discussion, but too often the meaning of the opinion itself... Instead of a vivid conception and a living belief, there remain only a few phrases retained by rote; or, if any part, the shell and husk only of the meaning is retained, the finer essence being lost.