Tolerance is giving to every other human being every right that you claim for yourself.
I regard the rights of men and women equal. In Love’s fair realm, husband and wife are king and queen, sceptered and crowned alike, and seated on the self-same throne.
Whoever labors for the happiness of those he loves elevates himself, no matter whether he works in the dreary shop or the perfumed field.
An honest God is the noblest work of man.
It always has been and forever will be impossible for slavery or any kind or form of injustice to produce a great poet.
The religion that has to be supported by law is without value, not only, but a fraud and a curse. The religious argument that has to be supported by a musket is hardly worth making.
The Church has always been willing to swap off treasures in heaven for cash down.
When the will defies fear, when duty throws the gauntlet down to fate, when honor scorns to compromise with death – that is heroism.
Freedom has invented every useful machine, from the lowest to the highest, from the simplest to the most complex.
I would rather live and love where death is king than have eternal life where love is not.
I do not believe anything comes by chance. I regard the present as the necessary child of a necessary past.
The truth is that all great men have had great mothers. Great women have had, as a rule, great fathers.
An honest God is the noblest work of man.
Whether there is another life or not, if there is any being who gave me this, I shall thank him from the bottom of my heart, because, upon the whole, my life has been a joy.
Most people can bear adversity; but if you wish to know what a man really is give him power.
There is no slavery but ignorance.
The mind cannot be securely anchored. If we do not advance, we go backward. If we do not grow, we decay. If we do not develop, we shrink and shrivel.
The superior man is the providence of the inferior. He is eyes for the blind, strength for the weak, and a shield for the defenseless. He stands erect by bending above the fallen. He rises by lifting others.
Few rich men own their property; their property owns them.
Whoever marries simply for himself will make a mistake; but whoever loves a woman so well that he says, ‘I will make her happy,’ makes no mistake. And so with the woman who says, ‘I will make him happy.’
No system of religion should go in partnership with barbarism. Neither should any Christian feel it his duty to defend the savagery of the past.
There may be another life, and if there is, the best way to prepare for it is by making somebody happy in this.
The inspiration of the Bible depends upon the ignorance of the gentleman who reads it.
You cannot change the conclusion of the brain by torture, nor by social ostracism. But I will tell you what you can do by these and what you have done. You can make hypocrites by the million.
What light is to the eyes – what air is to the lungs – what love is to the heart, liberty is to the soul of man.
In order to appreciate a great man, we must know his surroundings. We must understand the scope of the drama in which he played – the part he acted – and we must also know his audience.
In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments; there are consequences.
Colleges are places where pebbles are polished and diamonds are dimmed.
The grandest ambition that any man can possibly have is to so live and so improve himself in heart and brain as to be worthy of the love of some splendid woman; and the grandest ambition of any girl is to make herself worthy of the love and adoration of some magnificent man.
I will live by the standard of reason, and if thinking in accordance with reason takes me to perdition, then I will go to hell with my reason rather than to heaven without it.
Anger is a wind which blows out the lamp of the mind.
If there is any God, there is only one way to please him, and that is by a conscientious discharge of your obligations to your fellow men.
The great man who gives a true transcript of his mind fascinates and instructs. Most writers suppress individuality. They wish to please the public.
I simply claim that what ideas I have, I have a right to express; and that any man who denies that right to me is an intellectual thief and robber.
Neutrality is generally used as a mask to hide unusual bitterness. Sometimes it hides what it is – nothing. It always stands for hollowness of head or bitterness of heart, sometimes for both.
It is what people do not know that they persecute each other about.
The more liberty you give away the more you will have.
Justice should remove the bandage from her eyes long enough to distinguish between the vicious and the unfortunate.
This great question of predestination and free will, of free moral agency and accountability, and being saved by the grace of God, and damned for the glory of God, have occupied the mind of what we call the civilized world for many centuries.
He who does not want does not act.
There is a quiet about the life of a farmer, and the hope of a serene old age, that no other business or profession can promise.
The greatest test of courage on earth is to bear defeat without losing heart.
Whoever labors for the happiness of those he loves elevates himself, no matter whether he works in the dreary shop or the perfumed field.
In our era, the road to holiness necessarily passes through the world of action.
I will live by the standard of reason, and if thinking in accordance with reason takes me to perdition, then I will go to hell with my reason rather than to heaven without it.
The superior man is the providence of the inferior. He is eyes for the blind, strength for the weak, and a shield for the defenseless. He stands erect by bending above the fallen. He rises by lifting others.
In France, the people were the sport of a king’s caprice. Everywhere was the shadow of the Bastille. It fell upon the sunniest field, upon the happiest home.
A great man is a torch in the darkness, a beacon in superstition’s night, an inspiration and a prophecy.
Intelligence, integrity and courage are the great pillars that support the State. Above all, the citizens of a free nation should honor the brave and independent man – the man of stainless integrity, of will and intellectual force.
You have to change men physically before you change them intellectually.
Give to every human being every right that you claim for yourself.
As long as the people persist in voting for or against men on account of their religious views, just so long will hypocrisy hold place and power.
When every church becomes a school, every cathedral a university, every clergyman a teacher, and all their hearers brave and honest thinkers, then – and not until then – will the dream of poet, patriot, philanthropist and philosopher become a real and blessed truth.
The man who has really won the love of one good woman in this world, I do not care if he dies in the ditch a beggar – his life has been a success.
It is an old habit with theologians to beat the living with the bones of the dead.
If the guardians of society, the protectors of ‘young persons,’ could have had their way, we should have known nothing of Byron or Shelley. The voices that thrill the world would now be silent.
Many Americans do not understand that the officers of the government are simply the servants of the people.
Character is made of duty and love and sympathy, and, above all, of living and working for others.
In the republic of mediocrity, genius is dangerous.
So far as I am concerned, I think more of reasons than of reputations, more of principles than of persons, more of nature than of names, more of facts than of faiths.
Our fathers founded the first secular government that was ever founded in this world. Recollect that. The first secular government – the first government that said every church has exactly the same rights and no more; every religion has the same rights, and no more.
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