Controversy, though always an evil in itself, is sometimes a necessary evil.

As the telescope is not a substitute for, but an aid to, our sight, so revelation is not designed to supersede the use of reason, but to supply its deficiencies.

Ethical maxims are bandied about as a sort of current coin of discourse, and, being never melted down for use, those that are of base metal are never detected.

Curiosity is as much the parent of attention, as attention is of memory.

It is a good plan, with a young person of a character to be much affected by ludicrous and absurd representations, to show him plainly by examples that there is nothing which may not be thus represented. He will hardly need to be told that everything is not a mere joke.

To be always thinking about your manners is not the way to make them good; the very perfection of manners is not to think about yourself.

There is no right faith in believing what is true, unless we believe it because it is true.