World Quotes — page 5

I care nothing for creeds. I am not concerned with any one's religious belief. But I would have men think for themselves. If we do not, we can only abandon one superstition to take up another, and it may be a worse one. It is as bad for a …

Spiritual evolution is the progressive advance of mankind toward a state of things in which the light of ethical perfection shall be reflected from the face of human society; that is, in which all men shall live and move and have their …

[I]t was soon clear to me that I was collecting as much information bearing on the family history of Charles Darwin as on that of Francis Galton. It seemed desirable to place the two men to some extent in contrast in my volume, showing in …

It is a strong castle, and strongly guarded; but there is no impossibility to brave men.

Were the talents and virtues which heaven has bestowed on men given merely to make them more obedient drudges, to be sacrificed to the follies and ambition of a few? Or, were not the noble gifts so equally dispensed with a divine purpose …

My second fixed idea is the uselessness of men above sixty years of age, and the incalculable benefit it would be in commercial, political, and in professional life, if as a matter of course, men stopped work at this age.

Much reading is an oppression of the mind, and extinguishes the natural candle, which is the reason of so many senseless scholars in the world.

It is the same with the use of force, whether of the mob or of the State, upon diseased society; and not only those who prescribe its indiscriminate use as a sovereign remedy and a permanent tonic, but all who ever propose it as a cure, …

The augmentation of slaves weakens the states; and such a trade is diabolical in itself, and disgraceful to mankind.

But this is his way; it is the language of his character; and, though one might wish it to be otherwise, yet I cannot tell what right any of us have to pass a severe sentence upon it, for no other reason in the world, but because our own …

One cannot divine nor forecast the conditions that will make happiness; one only stumbles upon them by chance, in a lucky hour, at the world's end somewhere, and hold fast to the days, as to fortune or fame.

The world-Bibles, then, are fragments—fragments of Revelation, and therefore are rightly described as Revelation. p. 375

Men must have facts first and explanations afterwards.

After two thousand years of incredulity, the truth in this matter was forced upon the scientific world about the beginning of the present century.

We have a winding sheet in our mother’s womb, which grows with us from our conception, and we come into the world, wound up in that winding sheet, for we come to seek a grave.

I see the Four-fold Man. The Humanity in deadly sleep, And its fallen Emanation. The Spectre & its cruel Shadow. I see the Past, Present & Future, existing all at once Before me; O Divine Spirit sustain me on thy wings!

How many, how omnipotent are the interests which engage men to break the mental chains of women!

As long as the world shall last there will be wrongs, and if no man objected and no man rebelled, those wrongs would last forever. The objector and the rebel who raises his voice against what he believes to be the injustice of the present …

[I]t is nevertheless proper to make men aware that the price they pay for attempting to uphold the artificial right of property, is nothing less than the enormous sum of misery inflicted in the name of law and government.

Situation seems to be the mould in which men's characters are formed.

You have accounted yourselves happy on being environed with a great ditch from all the world beside.

To God, and not to man, are all men to account for their belief.

It has often been observed that the mothers of great men, and especially of great divines, have been remarkable for strong mind and force of intellect. Mothers have been found, as a general rule, to influence children's character far more …

You may talk of the tyranny of Nero and Tiberius; but the real tyranny is the tyranny of your next-door neighbor... Public opinion is a permeating influence, and it exacts obedience to itself; it requires us to think other men's thoughts, …