An effort made for the happiness of others lifts above ourselves.

Not in vain is Ireland pouring itself all over the earth. The Irish, with their glowing hearts and reverent credulity, are needed in this cold age of intellect and skepticism.

There have always been a large class of thinkers who deny that the world makes any progress. They say we move in a circle; that evils are never conquered, but only change their forms.

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!

All who strive to live for something beyond mere selfish aims find their capacities for doing good very inadequate to their aspirations. They do so much less than they want to do, and so much less than they, at the outset, expected to do, that their lives, viewed retrospectively, inevitably look like failure.

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

It is impossible to exaggerate the evil work theology has done in the world.