Most persons have but a very moderate capacity of happiness. Expecting...in marriage a far greater degree of happiness than they commonly find, and knowing not that the fault is in their own scanty capability of happiness.

All attempts by the State to bias the conclusions of its citizens on disputed subjects, are evil.

If it were only that people have diversities of taste, that is reason enough for not attempting to shape them all after one model. But different persons also require different conditions for their spiritual development, and can no more exist healthily in the same moral, than all the varieties of plants can in the same physical, atmosphere and climate.

The triumph of the Confederacy... would be a victory for the powers of evil which would give courage to the enemies of progress and damp the sprits of its friends all over the civilized world... [The American Civil War] is destined to be a turning point, for good or evil, of the course of human affairs.

The best state for human nature is that in which, while no one is poor, no one desires to be richer, nor has any reason to fear from thrust back, by the efforts of others to push themselves forward.

Ask yourself whether you are happy and you cease to be so. The only chance is to treat not happiness, but some end external to it, as the purpose of life.

As for charity, it is a matter in which the immediate effect on the persons directly concerned, and the ultimate consequence to the general good, are apt to be at complete war with one another.