Duty performed gives clearness and firmness to faith, and faith thus strengthened through duty becomes the more assured and satisfying to the soul.

To murder character is as truly a crime as to murder the body: the tongue of the slanderer is brother to the dagger of the assassin

Preventives of evil are far better than remedies; cheaper and easier of application, and surer in result.

He that is possessed with a prejudice is possessed with a devil.

Piety and morality are but the same spirit differently manifested. Piety is religion with its face toward God; morality is religion with its face toward the world.

Most of our censure of others is only oblique praise of self, uttered to show the wisdom and superiority of the speaker. It has all the invidiousness of self-praise, and all the ill-desert of falsehood.

We never do evil so thoroughly and heartily as when led to it by an honest but perverted, because mistaken, conscience.