Work! work! that is my unfailing cure for all troubles.

Nature made us individuals, as she did the flowers and the pebbles; but we are afraid to be peculiar, and so our society resembles a bag of marbles, or a string of mold candles. Why should we all dress after the same fashion? The frost never paints my windows twice alike.

The boughs of no two trees ever have the same arrangement. Nature always produces individuals; She never produces classes.

the excess of all good things is mischievous.

Childhood itself is scarcely more lovely than a cheerful, kindly, sunshiny old age.

Even if nothing worse than wasted mental effort could be laid to the charge of theology, that alone ought to be sufficient to banish it from the earth ... What a vast amount of labour and learning has been expended, as uselessly as emptying shallow puddles into sieves! How much intellect has been employed mousing after texts, to sustain preconceived doctrines!

We first crush people to the earth, and then claim the right of trampling on them forever, because they are prostrate.