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" I am an enemy to revolutions. I abhor, both from temper and from the clearest judgment I am able to form, all violent convulsions in the affairs of men. "

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" In infamy, it is wisely provided that he who stands highest in the ranks of society has the heaviest load to sustain. "

" God himself has no right to be a tyrant. "

" Was ever a great discovery prosecuted or an important benefit conferred upon the human race by him who was incapable of standing and thinking and feeling alone? "

" Every man has a certain sphere of discretion which he has a right to expect shall not be infringed by his neighbours. This right flows from the very nature of man. "

" The admission of one man, either hereditarily or for life only, into the place of chief of a country, is an evidence of the infirmity of man. Nature has set up no difference between a king and other men; a king, therefore, is purely the creation of our own hands. "

" Government, as it was forced upon mankind by their vices, so has it commonly been the creature of their ignorance and mistake. "

" The most desirable state of mankind is that which maintains general security with the smallest encroachment upon individual independence. "

" Man is the only creature we know, that, when the term of his natural life is ended, leaves the memory of himself behind him. "

" I know not how it is: there are some businesses for which dullness seems to be a qualification. "

" It is questionless desirable in all ordinary cases, wherever positive law is established, to restrain ourselves within the letter of that law and to allow the criminal all the benefit, if benefit to him shall result, of any evasion or escape that the law shall afford him. "

" Enthusiasm is always an interesting spectacle. When it expresses itself with an honest and artless eloquence, it is difficult to listen to it and not, in some degree, to catch the flame. "

" Social man regards all those by whom he is surrounded as enemies, or beings who may become such. He is ever on his guard lest his plain speaking should be willfully perverted, or should assume a meaning he never thought of, through the animosity or prejudice of the individual that hears him. "

" The world is all alike. Those that seem better than their neighbours are only more artful. They mean the same thing, though they take a different road. "

" I am most peremptorily of opinion against putting children extremely forward. If they desire it themselves, I would not balk them, for I love to attend to these unsophisticated indications. But otherwise, 'festina lente' is my maxim in education. "

" Above all we should not forget that government is an evil, a usurpation upon the private judgement and individual conscience of mankind. "

" How are the faculties of man to be best developed and his happiness secured? The state of a king is not favorable to this, nor the state of the noble and rich men of the earth. All this is artificial life, the inventions of vanity and grasping ambition, by which we have spoiled the man of nature and of pure, simple, and undistorted impulses. "

" The proper method for hastening the decay of error is by teaching every man to think for himself. "

" During my academical life, and from this time forward, I was indefatigable in my search after truth. I read all the authors of greatest repute, for and against the Trinity, original sin, and the most disputed doctrines, but I was not yet of an understanding sufficiently ripe for impartial decision, and all my inquiries terminated in Calvinism. "

" The soul of man is one of those subtle and evanescent substances that, as long as they remain still, the organ of sight does not remark; it must become agitated to become visible. "

" No one can display or can cultivate a fervent zeal in the mere repetition of a form. "

" The value of a man is in his intrinsic qualities: in that of which power cannot strip him and which adverse fortune cannot take away. That for which he is indebted to circumstances is mere trapping and tinsel. "

" Everything in the world is conducted by gradual process. This seems to be the great principle of harmony in the universe. "

" I am now in the full maturity of my age and vigor of my mind. Persons of various descriptions have repeatedly solicited me to turn my mind to dramatical composition. It was, indeed, the first amusement of my thoughts in my school-boy cell. "

" Religion is the most important of all things: the great point of discrimination that divides the man from the brute. It is our special prerogative that we can converse with that which we cannot see and believe in that the existence of which is reported to us by none of our senses. "

" We have, all of us, our duties. Every action of our lives, and every word that we utter, will either conduce to or detract from the discharge of our duty. "

" Perseverance is an active principle, and cannot continue to operate but under the influence of desire. "

" When we look on the roses and gaiety of youth, the mournful idea of mortality is altogether alien to our thoughts. We have heard of it as a speculation and a tale, but nothing but experience can bring it home to us. "

" What can be more clear and sound in explanation, than the love of a parent to his child? "

" Study with desire is real activity; without desire it is but the semblance and mockery of activity. "

" There is reverence that we owe to everything in human shape. "