I have never in my life met a man like him for noble simplicity, and boundless truthfulness. I understood from the way he talked that anyone who chose could deceive him, and that he would forgive anyone afterwards who had deceived him, and that was why I grew to love him.

For where God built a church, there the Devil would also build a chapel...Thus is the Devil ever God's ape.

He and his tyrannicide! I am in a mad fury about these explosions. If that is the new world! Damn O'Donovan Rossa; damn him behind and before, above, below, and roundabout; damn, deracinate, and destroy him, root and branch, self and company, world without end. Amen. I write that for sport if you like, but I will pray in earnest, O Lord, if you cannot convert, kindly delete him!

Virtue (or the man of virtue) is not left to stand alone. He who practices it will have neighbors.

I heard the bells from the future churches, the children playing and laughing in the schoolyards ... and here was an almond tree in bloom before me: I must reach out and cut a flowering branch. For, by believing passionately in something which still does not exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired, whatever we have not irrigated with our blood to such a degree that it becomes strong enough to stride across the somber threshold of nonexistence.

The greatest danger, that of losing one's own self, may pass off as quietly as if it were nothing; every other loss, that of an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife etc., is sure to be noticed.

Judge not, that you be not judged. For with what judgment you judge, you will be judged; and with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you. And why do you look at the speck in your brother's eye, but do not consider the plank in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, 'Let me remove the speck from your eye'; and look, a plank is in your own eye? Hypocrite! First remove the plank from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye. 

Nothing makes one old so quickly as the ever-present thought that one is growing older.

A state of war only serves as an excuse for domestic tyranny.

Philosophy is by its nature something esoteric, neither made for the mob nor capable of being prepared for the mob.

Free trade, one of the greatest blessings which a government can confer on a people, is in almost every country unpopular.

There is little less trouble in governing a private family than a whole kingdom. 

When scolded for masturbating in public, he said "I wish it were as easy to banish hunger by rubbing my belly."

All men are liable to error; and most men are, in many points, by passion or interest, under temptation to it.

For anyone who is alone, without God and without a master, the weight of days is dreadful. Hence one must choose a master, God being out of style.

There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval.

A grievous crime indeed against religion has been committed by the man who imagines that Islam is defended by the denial of the mathematical sciences.

Consider how, even in the meanest sorts of Labour, the whole soul of a man is composed into a kind of real harmony, the instant he sets himself to work! Doubt, Desire, Sorrow, Remorse, Indignation, Despair itself, all these like helldogs lie beleaguering the soul of the poor dayworker, as of every man: but he bends himself with free valour against his task, and all these are stilled, all these shrink murmuring far off into their caves. The man is now a man. The blessed glow of Labour in him, is it not as purifying fire, wherein all poison is burnt up, and of sour smoke itself there is made bright blessed flame!

Nature admits no lie.

The power of the periodical press is second only to that of the people.

We are all such accidents. We do not make up history and culture. We simply appear, not by our own choice. We make what we can of our condition with the means available. We must accept the mixture as we find it - the impurity of it, the tragedy of it, the hope of it.

Commoners are weightless. But he was a royal bon vivant who, no matter what, always weighed 125 kilos. I would be very surprised if he didn't have a few pounds left.

God is not needed to create guilt or to punish. Our fellow men suffice, aided by ourselves.

If you want to be happy, be.

Living a minimally acceptable ethical life involves using a substantial part of our spare resources to make the world a better place. Living a fully ethical life involves doing the most good we can.

It is manifest that every soul has a certain continuity with the soul of the Universe, so that it must be understood to exist and to be included not only there where it liveth and feeleth, but it is also by its essence and substance diffused throughout immensity. The power of each soul is itself somehow present afar in the Universe. It is not mixed, yet is there in some presence.

Holy Christendom has, in my judgment, no better teacher after the apostles than St. Augustine.

The everyday world demands our attention, and prevents us from sinking into ourselves. As a romantic, I have always resented this: I like to sink into myself. The problems and anxieties of living make it difficult. Well, now I had an anxiety that referred to something inside of me, and it reminded me that my inner world was just as real and important as the world around me.

The Christian priesthood, finding the doctrines of Christ levelled to every understanding, and too plain to need explanation, saw in the mysticism of Plato, materials with which they might build up an artificial system, which might, from its indistinctness, admit everlasting controversy, give employment for their order, and introduce it to profit, power and pre-eminence. The doctrines which flowed from the lips of Jesus himself are within the comprehension of a child ; but thousands of volumes have not yet explained the Platonisms engrafted on them; and for this obvious reason, that nonsense can never be explained.

Objective evidence and certitude are doubtless very fine ideals to play with, but where on this moonlit and dream-visited planet are they found?

It is necessary to show that there is nothing so little known [as the above rules], nothing more difficult to practice, or nothing more useful and universal.

No nation was ever so virtuous as each believes itself, and none was ever so wicked as each believes the other.

It is good to rub and polish our brain against that of others.

Scientific writing is abhorrently stylized and places a premium on poor quality.

Those only are happy (I thought) who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness; on the happiness of others, on the improvement of mankind, even on some art or pursuit, followed not as a means, but as itself an ideal end. Aiming thus at something else, they find happiness by the way.

See thou tell no man; but go thy way, shew thyself to the priest, and offer the gift that Moses commanded, for a testimony unto them.

Tell me what kind of man governs a People, you tell me, with much exactness, what the net sum-total of social worth in that People has for some time been.

Our bodies are perishable, wealth is not at all permanent and death is always nearby. Therefore we must immediately engage in acts of merit.

In a really equal democracy, every or any section would be represented, not disproportionately, but proportionately. ... Unless they are, there is not equal government, but a government of inequality and privilege: one part of the people rule over the rest: there is a part whose fair and equal share of influence in the representation is withheld from them, contrary to all just government, but, above all, contrary to the principle of democracy, which professes equality as its very root and foundation.

I am old, but I certainly have not that sign of old age, extolling the past at the expense of the present.

Asceticism is the trifling of an enthusiast with his power, a puerile coquetting with his selfishness or his vanity, in the absence of any sufficiently great object to employ the first or overcome the last.

The Puritan hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators.

What is this wide-spread component of the surface of the earth? and whence did it come? You may think this no very hopeful inquiry. You may not unnaturally suppose that the attempt to solve such problems as these can lead to no result, save that of entangling the inquirer in vague speculations, incapable of refutation and of verification. If such were really the case, I should have selected some other subject than a "piece of chalk" for my discourse. But, in truth, after much deliberation, I have been unable to think of any topic which would so well enable me to lead you to see how solid is the foundation upon which some of the most startling conclusions of physical science rest.

History is nothing but assisted and recorded memory. It might almost be said to be no science at all, if memory and faith in memory were not what science necessarily rest on. In order to sift evidence we must rely on some witness, and we must trust experience before we proceed to expand it. The line between what is known scientifically and what has to be assumed in order to support knowledge is impossible to draw. Memory itself is an internal rumour; and when to this hearsay within the mind we add the falsified echoes that reach us from others, we have but a shifting and unseizable basis to build upon. The picture we frame of the past changes continually and grows every day less similar to the original experience which it purports to describe.

I don't know what your destiny will be, but one thing I know, the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who have sought and found how to serve.

The value of money is in proportion to the quantity of the necessaries of life which it will purchase.