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 t….

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, th….

Woe to the unlucky man who as a child is taught, even as a portion of his creed, what his grown reason must forswear..

Justice without wisdom is impossible..

I have nothing but myself to write about, no facts, no theories, no opinions, no adventures, no sentiments, nothing but my own poor barren individual….

For me this world was neither so high nor so low as the Church would have it; chequered over with its wild light shadows, I could love it and all the….

I cut a hole in my heart and wrote with the blood..

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..

Do you not think that sometimes when matters are at the worst with us, when we appear to have done all which we ourselves can do, yet all has been un….

Ignorance is the dominion of absurdity..

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 happ….

The practical effect of a belief is the real test of its soundness. Where we find a heroic life appearing as the uniform fruit of a particular mode o….

I am convinced with Plato , with St. Paul, with St. Augustine, with Calvin , and with Leibnitz, that this universe, and every smallest portion of it,….

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 go….

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..

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..

We read the past by the light of the present, and the forms vary as the shadows fall, or as the point of vision alters..

Experience is no more transferable in morals than in art..

I think there is a spiritual scent in us which feels mischief coming, as they say birds scent storms..

To be enthusiastic about doing much with human nature is a foolish business indeed; and, throwing himself into his work as he was doing, and expectin….

The solitary side of our nature demands leisure for reflection upon subjects on which the dash and whirl of daily business, so long as its clouds ris….