A full-dressed ecclesiastic is a sort of go-cart of divinity; an ethical automaton. A clerical prig is, in general, a very dangerous as well as contemptible character. The utmost that those who thus habitually confound their opinions and sentiments with the outside coverings of their bodies can aspire to, is a negative and neutral character, like wax-work figures, where the dress is done as much to the life as the man, and where both are respectable pieces of pasteboard, or harmless compositions of fleecy hosiery.

The imagination is of so delicate a texture that even words wound it.

What I mean by living to one's self is living in the world, as in it, not of it.

No act terminating in itself constitutes greatness.

You know more of a road by having traveled it than by all the conjectures and descriptions in the world.

We all wear some disguise, make some professions, use some artifice, to set ourselves off as being better than we are; and yet it is not denied that we have some good intentions and praiseworthy qualities at bottom.

[Science is] the desire to know causes.