We too often forget that not only is there ‘a soul of goodness in things evil,’ but very generally also, a soul of truth in things erroneous.
The great aim of education is not knowledge but action.
They who employ force by proxy are as much responsible for that force as though they employed it themselves.
No man is equal to his book. All the best products of his mental activity go into his book, where they come separated from the mass of inferior products with which they are mingled in his daily talk.
A living thing is distinguished from a dead thing by the multiplicity of the changes at any moment taking place in it.
Time is that which man is always trying to kill but which ends in killing him.
The Republican form of government is the highest form of government: but because of this it requires the highest type of human nature, a type nowhere at present existing.
In science the important thing is to modify and change one’s ideas as science advances.
Music must take rank as the highest of the fine arts – as the one which, more than any other, ministers to the human spirit.
When a man’s knowledge is not in order, the more of it he has the greater will be his confusion.
The preservation of health is a duty. Few seem conscious that there is such a thing as physical morality.
Marriage: a ceremony in which rings are put on the finger of the lady and through the nose of the gentleman.
Marriage: A word which should be pronounced ‘mirage’.
Old forms of government finally grow so oppressive that they must be thrown off even at the risk of reigns of terror.
People are beginning to see that the first requisite to success in life is to be a good animal.
Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded.
Society exists for the benefit of its members, not the members for the benefit of society.
A jury is composed of twelve men of average ignorance.
We do not commonly see in a tax a diminution of freedom, and yet it clearly is one.
The wise man must remember that while he is a descendant of the past, he is a parent of the future.