We must not be guilty of taking the law into our own hands, and converting it from what it really is to what we think it ought to be.

Genius of the highest kind implies an unusual intensity of the modifying power.

The curiosity of an honorable mind willingly rests there, where the love of truth does not urge it farther onward, and the love of its neighbor bids it stop; in other words, it willingly stops at the point where the interests of truth do not beckon it onward, and charity cries, Halt!

Every reform, however necessary, will by weak minds be carried to an excess, that itself will need reforming.

And to be wroth with one we love…Doth work like madness in the brain.

Whenever philosophy has taken into its plan religion, it has ended in skepticism; and whenever religion excludes philosophy, or the spirit of free inquiry, it leads to willful blindness and superstition.

He who begins by loving Christianity more than Truth, will proceed by loving his sect or church better than Christianity, and end in loving himself better than all.