Learning is the ally, not the adversary of genius… he who reads in a proper spirit, can scarcely read too much.
To diminish the cases in which the assistance of others is felt absolutely necessary is the only genuine road to independence.
Human creatures, living in the circle of their intimates and friends, are too apt to remain in ignorance of the comments and instructions which may be made of what they say and do in the world at large. I entertain a great horror of this ignorance.
The value of a man is in his intrinsic qualities: in that of which power cannot strip him and which adverse fortune cannot take away. That for which he is indebted to circumstances is mere trapping and tinsel.
We cannot perform our tasks to the best of our power, unless we think well of our own capacity.
Soundness of understanding is connected with freedom of enquiry; consequently, opinion should, as far as public security will admit, be exempted from restraint.
There is an indescribable something that ties us to life. For this purpose, it is not necessary that we should be happy. Though our life be almost without enjoyment, we do not consent to part with it.
We have, all of us, our duties. Every action of our lives, and every word that we utter, will either conduce to or detract from the discharge of our duty.
Everything in the world is conducted by gradual process. This seems to be the great principle of harmony in the universe.
There is nothing that human imagination can figure brilliant and enviable that human genius and skill do not aspire to realize.
The world is all alike. Those that seem better than their neighbours are only more artful. They mean the same thing, though they take a different road.
In contemplation and reverie, one thought introduces another perpetually; and it is by similarity, or the hooking of one upon the other, that the process of thinking is carried on.
Harshness and unkindness are relative. The appearance of them may be the fruits of the greatest kindness.
He has no right to his life when his duty calls him to resign it. Other men are bound… to deprive him of life or liberty, if that should appear in any case to be indispensably necessary to prevent a greater evil.
The evils that arise to us from the structure of the material universe are neither trivial nor few, yet the history of political society sufficiently shows that man is, of all other beings, the most formidable enemy to man.
Justice is the sum of all moral duty.
Hope is in some respects a thing more brilliant, more vivifying, than fruition. What we have looked forward to with eager and earnest aspiration is never in all respects equal to the picture we had formed of it. The very uncertainty enhances the enjoyment.
Everything understood by the term co-operation is in some sense an evil.
What is high birth to him to whom high birth has never been the theme of his contemplation? What is a throne to him who has never dreamed of a throne?
While my mother lived, I always felt to a certain degree as if I had somebody who was my superior and who exercised a mysterious protection over me. I belonged to something – I hung to something – there is nothing that has so much reverence and religion in it as affection to parents.
Men who do not contend in earnest can have little warmth and fervor in what they undertake, and are more than half prepared to betray the cause, in the vindication of which they have engaged their services.
Perseverance is an active principle, and cannot continue to operate but under the influence of desire.
If he who employs coercion against me could mould me to his purposes by argument, no doubt he would. He pretends to punish me because his argument is strong; but he really punishes me because his argument is weak.
Man is a being of a mixed nature; and, as there is no integrity without its flaws, so is there no man so knavish but that in some things he may be trusted.
The four principal oral instructors to whom I feel my mind indebted for improvement were Joseph Fawcet, Thomas Holcroft, George Dyson, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
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