There is no second country for an Englishman, except a ship and the sea.

[Moralistic] novels are at the same disadvantage as teachers: children never believe them, because they make everything that happens relate to the lesson at hand.

Search for the truth is the noblest occupation of man; its publication is a duty.

Exile: A tomb in which you can get mail.

Whatever efforts one may make, one must revert to the realization that religion is the real basis of morality; religion is the real and perceptible purpose within us, which alone, can turn aside our attention from things. ... The science of morality can no more teach human beings to be honest, in all the magnificence of this word, than geometry can teach one how to draw.

Nature, who permits no two leaves to be exactly alike, has given a still greater diversity to human minds. Imitation, then, is a double murder; for it deprives both copy and original of their primitive existence.

I do not want an echo of myself from my children. I do not want to hear from them merely the reverberation of my own voice.