There are three classes into which all the women past seventy that ever I knew were to be divided: 1. That dear old soul; 2. That old woman; 3. That old witch.

Heart-chilling superstition! thou canst glaze even Pity's eye with her own frozen tear.

Novels are to love as fairy tales to dreams.

If you are not a thinking man, to what purpose are you a man at all?.

The first great requisite is absolute sincerity. Falsehood and disguise are miseries and misery-makers.

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.

Real pain can alone cure us of imaginary ills. We feel a thousand miseries till we are lucky enough to feel misery.