As hardly anything can accidentally touch the soft clay without stamping its mark on it, so hardly any reading can interest a child, without contribu….

Neither human applause nor human censure is to be taken as the best of truth; but either should set us upon testing ourselves..

Galileo probably would have escaped persecution if his discoveries could have been disproved..

The more secure we feel against our liability to any error to which, in fact, we are liable, the greater must be our danger of falling into it..

He that is not open to conviction is not qualified for discussion..

A fanatic, either, religious or political, is the subject of strong delusions..

It is an awful, an appalling thought, that we may be, this moment and every moment, in the presence of malignant spirits..

Some persons resemble certain trees, such as the nut, which flowers in February and ripens its fruit in September; or the juniper and the arbutus; wh….

As the flower is before the fruit, so is faith before good works..

To follow imperfect, uncertain, or corrupted traditions, in order to avoid erring in our own judgment, is but to exchange one danger for another..

Not in books only, nor yet in oral discourse, but often also in words there are boundless stores of moral and historic truth, and no less of passion ….

A certain class of novels may with propriety be called fables..

The best security against revolution is in constant correction of abuses and the introduction of needed improvements. It is the neglect of timely rep….

The happiest lot for a man, as far as birth is concerned, is that it should be such as to give him but little occasion to think much about it..

It is a good plan, with a young person of a character to be much affected by ludicrous and absurd representations, to show him plainly by examples th….

It is generally true that all that is required to make men unmindful of what they owe to God for any blessing, is, that they should receive that bles….

It may be worth noticing as a curious circumstance, when persons past forty before they were at all acquainted form together a very close intimacy of….

The heathen mythology not only was not true, but was not even supported as true; it not only deserved no faith, but it demanded none. The very preten….

He who is not aware of his ignorance will be only misled by his knowledge..

If all our wishes were gratified, most of our pleasures would be destroyed..

The power of duly appreciating little things belongs to a great mind..