The only good that I can see in the demonstration of the truth of "Spiritualism" is to furnish an additional argument against suicide. Better live a crossing-sweeper than die and be made to talk twaddle by a "medium" hired at a guinea a séance.

The most considerable difference I note among men is not in their readiness to fall into error, but in their readiness to acknowledge these inevitable lapses.

In scientific work, those who refuse to go beyond fact rarely get as far as fact.

I have no faith, very little hope, and as much charity as I can afford.

Fact I know; and Law I know; but what is this Necessity, save an empty shadow of my own mind's throwing?

If the twentieth century is to be better than the nineteenth, it will be because there are among us men who walk in Priestley's footsteps....To all eternity, the sum of truth and right will have been increased by their means; to all eternity, falsehoods and injustice will be the weaker because they have lived.

The best men of the best epochs are simply those who make the fewest blunders and commit the fewest sins.