If you put a chain around the neck of a slave, the other end fastens itself around your own.

Where dwells the religion? Tell me first where dwells electricity, or motion, or thought or gesture. They do not dwell or stay atall. Electricity cannot be made fast, mortared up and ended, like London Monument, or the Tower, so that you shall know where to find it, and keep it fixed, as the English do with their things, forevermore; it is passing, glancing, gesticular; it is a traveller, a newness, a surprise, a secret which perplexes them, and puts them out.

Alas for the unhappy man that is called to stand in the pulpit, and not give the bread of life.

The only joy in his being mine, is that the not mine is mine.

A just thinker will allow full swing to his scepticism. I dip my pen in the blackest ink, because I am not afraid of falling into my inkpot.... We are of different opinions at different hours, but we always may be said to be at heart on the side of truth.

There is one mind common to all individual men

By the irresistible maturing of the general mind, the Christian traditions have lost their hold.