In the matter of belief, we are all extreme conservatives.

Habit is the great flywheel of society.

It is so human a book that I don't see how belief in its divine authority can survive the reading of it.

He who refuses to embrace a unique opportunity loses the prize as surely as if he had failed.

Romeo wants Juliet as the filings want the magnet; and if no obstacles intervene he moves towards her by as straight a line as they. But Romeo and Juliet, if a wall be built between them, do not remain idiotically pressing their faces against its opposite sides like the magnet and the filings with the card. Romeo soon finds a circuitous way, by scaling the wall or otherwise, of touching Juliet's lips directly. With the filings the path is fixed; whether it reaches the end depends on accidents. With the lover it is the end which is fixed, the path may be modified indefinitely.

If the grace of God miraculously operates, it probably operates through the subliminal door.

We are proud of a human nature that could be so passionately extreme, but we shrink from advising others to follow the example.