To extinguish the free will is to strike the conscience with death, for both have but one and the same life.
All that we do outwardly is but the expression and completion of our inward thought. To work effectively, we must think clearly; to act nobly, we must think nobly.
The world is to be carried forward by truth, which at first offends, which wins its way by degrees, which the many hate and would rejoice to crush.
The office of government is not to confer happiness, but to give men the opportunity to work out happiness for themselves.
God is another name for human intelligence raised above all error and imperfection, and extended to all possible truth.
Every mind was made for growth, for knowledge, and its nature is sinned against when it is doomed to ignorance.
The home is the chief school of human virtues.
He who is false to the present duty breaks a thread in the loom, and you will see the effect when the weaving of a life-time is unraveled.
It is far more important to me to preserve an unblemished conscience than to compass any object however great.
One good anecdote is worth a volume of biography.
Undoubtedly a man is to labor to better his condition, but first to better himself.
I laugh, for hope hath a happy place with me; If my boat sinks, ’tis to another sea.
The mind, in proportion as it is cut off from free communication with nature, with revelation, with God, with itself, loses its life, just as the body droops when debarred from the air and the cheering light from heaven.
I call that mind free which protects itself against the usurpations of society, and which does not cower to human opinion: Which refuses to be the slave or tool of the many or of the few, and guards its empire over itself as nobler than the empire of the world.
Love is the life of the soul. It is the harmony of the universe.
I call that mind free which jealously guards its intellectual rights and powers, which calls no man master, which does not content itself with a passive or hereditary faith, which opens itself to light whencesoever it may come, which receives new truth as an angel from Heaven.
No one should part with their individuality and become that of another.
But the ground of a man’s culture lies in his nature, not in his calling. His powers are to be unfolded on account of their inherent dignity, not their outward direction. He is to be educated, because he is a man, not because he is to make shoes, nail, or pins.
Our affections are our life. We live by them; they supply our warmth.
The hills are reared, the seas are scooped in vain If learning’s altar vanish from the plain.