A person may cause evil to others not only by his actions but by his inaction, and in either case he is justly accountable to them for the injury.

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.

Marriage is the only actual bondage known to our law. There remain no legal slaves, except the mistress of every house.

Each undervalues that part of the materials of thought with which he is not familiar.

The study of science teaches young men to think, while study of the classics teaches them to express thought.

Whatever crushes individuality is despotism, by whatever name it may be called and whether it professes to be enforcing the will of God or the injunctions of men.

The prevailing tendency to regard all the marked distinctions of human character as innate, and in the main indelible, and to ignore the irresistible proofs that by far the greater part of those differences, whether between individuals, races, or sexes are such as not only might but naturally would be produced by differences in circumstances, is one of the chief hinderances to the rational treatment of great social questions, and one of the greatest stumbling blocks to human improvement.