The best that we can do for one another is to exchange our thoughts freely; and that, after all, is about all.
Thirst of power and of riches now bear sway, The passion and infirmity of age.
A single seed of fact will produce in a season or two a harvest of calumnies; but sensible men will pay no attention to them.
Where nature is sovereign, there is no need of austerity and self-denial.
You cannot reason people into loving those whom they are not drawn to love; they cannot reason themselves into it; and there are some contrarieties of temper which are too strong even for the obligations of relationship.
Morality rests upon a sense of obligation; and obligation has no meaning except as implying a Divine command, without which it would cease to be.
The better one is morally the less aware they are of their virtue.
To tell men that they cannot help themselves is to fling them into recklessness and despair.
Experience teaches slowly, and at the cost of mistakes.
I would sooner perish for ever than stoop down before a Being who may have power to crush me, but whom my heart forbids me to reverence.
We call heaven our home, as the best name we know to give it.
Science rests on reason and experiment, and can meet an opponent with calmness; [but] a creed is always sensitive.
High original genius is always ridiculed on its first appearance; most of all by those who have won themselves the highest reputation in working on the established lines. Genius only commands recognition when it has created the taste which is to appreciate it.
What is called virtue in the common sense of the word has nothing to do with this or that man's prosperity, or even happiness.
English character and English freedom depend comparatively little on the form which the Constitution assumes at Westminster. A centralised democracy may be as tyrannical as an absolute monarch; and if the vigour of the nation is to continue unimpaired, each individual, each family, each district, must preserve as far as possible its independence, its self-completeness, its powers and its privilege to manage its own affairs and think its own thoughts.
Nature is less partial than she appears, and all situations in life have their compensations along with them.
True greatness is the most ready to recognize and most willing to obey those simple outward laws which have been sanctioned by the experience of mankind.
Life is more than a theory, and love of truth butters no bread: old men who have had to struggle along their way, who know the endless bitterness, the grave moral deterioration which follow an empty exchequer, may well be pardoned for an over-wish to see their sons secured from it; hunger, at least, is a reality.
Charity is from person to person; and it loses half, far more than half, its moral value when the giver is not brought into personal relation with those to whom he gives.
Women's eyes are rapid in detecting a heart which is ill at ease with itself, and, knowing the value of sympathy, and finding their own greatest happiness not in receiving it, but in giving it, with them to be unhappy is at once to be interesting.
Minds vary in sensitiveness and in self-power, as bodies do in susceptibility of attraction and repulsion. When, when shall we learn that they are governed by laws as inexorable as physical laws, and that a man can as easily refuse to obey what has power over him as a steel atom can resist the magnet?
The moral of human life is never simple, and the moral of a story which aims only at being true to human life cannot be expected to be any more so.
We are complex, and therefore, in our natural state, inconsistent, beings, and the opinion of this hour need not be the opinion of the next.
If you think you can temper yourself into manliness by sitting here over your books, it is the very silliest fancy that ever tempted a young man to his ruin. You cannot dream yourself into a character; you must hammer and forge yourself one.
Carelessness is inexcusable, and merits the inevitable sequence.
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