Excess always carries its own retribution.

Petty laws breed great crimes.

Charity is a flower not naturally of earthly growth, and it needs manuring with a promise of profit.

A just chastisement may benefit a man, though it seldom does; but an unjust one changes all his blood to gall.

the State only aims at instilling those qualities in its public by which its demands are obeyed, and its exchequer is filled. Its highest attainment is the reduction of mankind to clockwork. In its atmosphere all those finer and more delicate liberties, which require treatment and spacious expansion, inevitably dry up and perish. The State requires a taxpaying machine in which there is no hitch, an exchequer in which there is never a deficit, and a public, monotonous, obedient, colorless, spiritless, moving humbly like a flock of sheep along a straight high road between two walls.

Honor is an old-world thing; but it smells sweet to those in whose hand it is strong.

Even of death Christianity has made a terror which was unknown to the gay calmness of the Pagan and the stoical repose of the Indian.