When an action is once done, it is right or wrong for ever; no accidental failure of its good or evil fruits can possibly alter that.

No simplicity of mind, no obscurity of station, can escape the universal duty of questioning all that we believe.

There is one thing in the world more wicked than the desire to command, and that is the will to obey.

An atmosphere of beliefs and conceptions has been formed by the labours and struggles of our forefathers, which enables us to breathe amid the various and complex circumstances of our life.

A little reflection will show us that every belief, even the simplest and most fundamental, goes beyond experience when regarded as a guide to our actions.

Every rustic who delivers in the village alehouse his slow, infrequent sentences, may help to kill or keep alive the fatal superstitions which clog his race.

He who truly believes that which prompts him to an action has looked upon the action to lust after it, he has committed it already in his heart.