Falsehood is difficult to be maintained. When the materials of a building are solid blocks of stone, very rude architecture will suffice; but a structure of rotten materials needs the most careful adjustment to make it stand at all.

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

Unless people can be kept in the dark, it is best for those who love the truth to give them the full light.

Some persons follow the dictates of their conscience only in the same sense in which a coachman may be said to follow the horses he is driving.

Every instance of a man's suffering the penalty of the law is an instance of the failure of that penalty in effecting its purpose, which is to deter.

He only is exempt from failures who makes no efforts.

As there are dim-sighted people who live in a sort of perpetual twilight, so there are some who, having neither much clearness of head nor a very elevated tone of morality, are perpetually haunted by suspicions of everybody and everything.