In employing fiction to make truth clear and goodness attractive, we are only following the example which every Christian ought to propose to himself.

In Plato's opinion, man was made for philosophy; in Bacon's opinion, philosophy was made for man.

A government cannot be wrong in punishing fraud or force, but it is almost certain to be wrong if, abandoning its legitimate function, it tells private individuals that it knows their business better than they know it themselves.

The business of everybody is the business of nobody.

The history of nations, in the sense in which I use the word, is often best studied in works not professedly historical.

The ascendency of the sacerdotal order was long the ascendency which naturally and properly belonged to intellectual superiority.

What proposition is there respecting human nature which is absolutely and universally true? We know of only one,--and that is not only true, but identical,--that men always act from self-interest.