It is not scholarship alone, but scholarship impregnated with religion, that tells on the great mass of society. We have no faith in the efficacy of mechanic's institutes, or even of primary and elementary schools, for building up a virtuous and well conditioned peasantry, so long as they stand dissevered from the lessons of Christian piety.
Thomas ChalmersEven in the fiercest uproar of our stormy passions, conscience, though in her softest whispers, gives to the supremacy of rectitude the voice of an undying testimony.
Thomas ChalmersThe human mind feels restless and dissatisfied under the anxieties of ignorance. It longs for the repose of conviction; and to gain this repose it will often rather precipitate its conclusions than wait for the tardy lights of observation and experiment. There is such a thing, too, as the love of simplicity and system,--a prejudice of the understanding which disposes it to include all the phenomena of nature under a few sweeping generalities,--an indolence which loves to repose on the beauties of a theory rather than encounter the fatiguing detail of its evidences.
Thomas Chalmers