Every violation of truth is not only a sort of suicide in the liar, but is a stab at the health of human society.

The reverence for the deeds of our ancestors is a treacherous sentiment. Their merit was not to reverence the old, but to honor the present moment; and we falsely make them excuses of the very habit which they hated and defied.

Why should the way I feel depend on the thoughts in someone else's head?

The sun shines and warms and lights us and we have no curiosity to know why this is so; but we ask the reason of all evil, of pain, and hunger, and mosquitoes and silly people.

We are the prisoners of ideas. They catch us up for moments into their heaven, and so fully engage us, that we take no thought forthe morrow, gaze like children, without an effort to make them our own.

Everything good is on the highway.

The martyr cannot be dishonored. Every lash inflicted is a tongue of fame; every prison a more illustrious abode.