We cannot perform our tasks to the best of our power, unless we think well of our own capacity.

God himself has no right to be a tyrant.

By right, as the word is employed in this subject, has always been understood discretion, that is, a full and complete power of either doing a thing or omitting it, without the person's becoming liable to animadversion or censure from another, that is, in other words, without his incurring any degree of turpitude or guilt. Now in this sense I affirm that man has no rights, no discretionary power whatever.

What indeed is life, unless so far as it is enjoyed? It does not merit the name.

The proper method for hastening the decay of error, is not, by brute force, or by regulation which is one of the classes of force, to endeavour to reduce men to intellectual uniformity; but on the contrary by teaching every man to think for himself.

My thoughts will be taken up with the future or the past, with what is to come or what has been. Of the present there is necessarily no image.

We are so curiously made that one atom put in the wrong place in our original structure will often make us unhappy for life.