There is hardly an absurdity of the past that cannot be found flourishing somewhere in the present.
Civilizations come and go; they conquer the earth and crumble into dust; but faith survives every desolation.
History offers some consolation by reminding us that sin has flourished in every age.
Knowledge that does not generate achievement is a pale and bloodless thing, unworthy of mankind.
Time sanctifies everything; even the most arrant theft in the hands of the robber’s grandchildren becomes sacred and inviolable property.
Paul created a theology of which none but the vaguest warrants can be found in the words of Christ.
It is one of the most culpable oversights of nature that virtue and beauty so often come in separate packages.
Wherever men do things, other men will arise who will explain to them how things should be done.
If you wish to be loved, be modest; if you wish to be admired, be proud; if you wish both, combine external modesty with internal pride.
Destroy it. There may be a redistribution of the land, but the natural inequality of men soon re-creates an inequality of possessions and privileges, and raises to power a new minority with essentially the same instincts as the old.
Power dements even more than it corrupts, lowering the guard of foresight and raising the haste of action.
Who will dare to write a history of human goodness?
The individual succumbs, but he does not die if he has left something to mankind.
To seek, beneath the universal strife, the hidden harmony of things.
Contentment is rare among men as it is natural among animals.
As soon as liberty is complete it dies in anarchy.
Every form of government tends to perish by excess of its basic principle.
Nature has never read the Declaration of Independence. It continues to make us unequal.
Moral codes adjust themselves to environmental conditions.
Truth always originates in a minority of one, and every custom begins as a broken precedent.