What makes saintliness in my view, as distinguished from ordinary…

That ignorant confidence in one's self and one's future, which comes in life's first dawn, has a sort of mournful charm in experienced eyes, who know how much it all amounts to.

What shall a man do with a sublime tier of moral faculties, when the most profitable business out of his port is the slave-trade? So it was in Newport in those days.

The greater the interest involved in a truth the more careful, self-distrustful, and patient should be the inquiry. I would not attack the faith of a heathen without being sure I had a better one to put in its place, because, such as it …

Most mothers are instinctive philosophers.

The obstinancy of cleverness and reason is nothing to the obstinancy of folly and inanity.

In the old times, women did not get their lives written, though I don't doubt many of them were much better worth writing than the men's.