The Providence that watches over the affairs of men works out of their mistakes, at times, a healthier issue than could have been accomplished by their wisest forethought.
Nature is less partial than she appears, and all situations in life have their compensations along with them.
A person possessed with an idea cannot be reasoned with.
Justice without wisdom is impossible.
Nature is not a partisan, but out of her ample treasue house she produces children in infinite variety, of which she is equally the mother, and disowns none of 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.
Man is a real man, and can live and act manfully in this world, not in the strength of opinions, not according to what he thinks, but according to what he is .
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, exactly fulfils the purpose for which Almighty God designed it.
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.
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.
Instead of man to love, we have a man-god to worship. From being the example of devotion, he is its object; the religion of Christ ended with his life, and left us instead but the Christian religion.
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 rise thick about us, forbid the intellect to fasten itself.
No person is ever good for much, that hasn’t been swept off their feet by enthusiasm between ages twenty and thirty.
The moral system of the universe is like a document written in alternate ciphers, which change from line to line.
Of all the evil spirits abroad at this hour in the world, insincerity is the most dangerous.
The endurance of the inequalities of life by the poor is the marvel of human society.
We enter the world alone, we leave the world alone.
We live merely on the crust or rind of things.
Experience teaches slowly, and at the cost of mistakes.
The war of good and evil is mightiest in mightiest souls, and even in the darkest time the heart will maintain its right against the hardest creed.