You cannot dream yourself into a character; you must hammer and forge…

I am convinced with Plato, with St. Paul, with St. Augustine, with Calvin, and with Leibnitz, that this universe, and every smallest portion of it, exactly fulfils the purpose for which Almighty God designed it.

Man is a real man, and can live and act manfully in this world, not in the strength of opinions, not according to what he thinks, but according to what he is.

I cut a hole in my heart and wrote with the blood.

The moral of human life is never simple, and the moral of a story which aims only at being true to human life cannot be expected to be any more so.

It is so good that as men looked at it they said this is too good for man: nothing but the inspiration of God could have given this. Likely enough men should say so; but what might be admired as a metaphor became petrified into a doctrine, …

I do not dishonour the Bible. I honour it above all books. The New Testament alone, since I have been able to read it humanly, has to me outweighed all the literature of the world. It is because we dishonour it by making it an idol, and …