On the face of it, it must be a bad cause which will not bear discussion. Truth seeks light instead of shunning it.

Any Sodom could be saved by ten righteous men.

When thoughts cannot find vent and utterance in action, the mind ceases to think. It will not continue to produce its mighty births of power and beauty, to see them fall dead-born into the world, or to be strangled in embryo.

Love must be the same in all worlds.

Knowledge has its boundary line, where it abuts on ignorance; on the outside of that boundary line are ignorance and miracles; on the inside of it are science and no miracles.

Conscience is the magnet of the soul. It has a divine polarity. Amid the tempests of passion, in the dark hours of trial, that only lie just this side of despair, when a host of fierce temptations beleaguer, then consult this Divine Monitor; and though its tiny needle may tremble amid the attractions of earth, yet, if uncorrupted, its polestar will be the throne of God.

On entering this world our starting-point is _Ignorance_. None, however, but idiots remain there.

Resistance to improvement contradicts the noblest instincts of the race. It begets its opposite. The fanaticism of reform is only the raging of the accumulated waters caused by the obstructions which an ultra conservatism has thrown across the stream of progress; and revolution itself is but the sudden overwhelming and sweeping away of impediments that should have been seasonably removed.

Time is a seedfield; in youth we sow it with causes; in after life we reap the harvest of effects.

An ignorant man is always able to say yes or no immediately to any proposition. To a wise man, comparatively few things can be propounded which do not require a response with qualifications, with discriminations, with proportion.

History, with scarcely an exception, ought to be rewritten.

Jails and state prisons are the complement of schools: so many less as you have of the latter, so many more must you have of the former.

The most formidable attribute of temptation is its increasing power, its accelerating ratio of velocity. Every act of repetition increases power, diminishes resistance. It is like the letting out of waters--where a drop can go, a river can go. Whoever yields to temptation, subjects himself to the law of falling bodies.

In dress, seek the middle between foppery and shabbiness.

The earth endured Christ's ministry only three years;--not three weeks after his real character and purposes were generally known.

To know the machine one must know where each part belongs, and what its office is.

The phenomena of history should be so recorded as to aid the reader, and particularly the young reader, in discovering its philosophy, instead of being recorded as they have hitherto generally been, in such a way as to obliterate the better instincts of humanity.

Habit is a cable. We weave a thread of it every day, and at last we cannot break it.

Nature ... is uniform. There is no sign of accident or caprice, or the arbitrary, fitful interference of a superior power, but the things of nature proceed onward from age to age with a solemn, majestic movement--an august procession that strikes the contemplative beholder with awe, and expands and lifts his soul with indescribable emotions of sublimity and grandeur.

When a child can be brought to tears, not from fear of punishment, but from repentance of his offense, he needs no chastisement. When the tears begin to flow from grief at one's own conduct, be sure there is an angel nestling in the bosom.

Even the choicest literature should be taken as the condiment, and not as the sustenance of life. It should be neither the warp nor the woof of existence, but only the flowery edging upon its borders.

Manners are laws in their infancy.

When a man, before innocent, commits crime, he passes, by a sudden transition, into a new world. The significance of all objects around him is changed; the laws of association in his own mind are changed; a viper is born in his breast which stings and goads him. Sounds that he never heard before ring in his ears; a violated conscience turns avenger and scourger;--the foe is within him. Were it merely an external enemy, assaulting the criminal from without, perhaps he might be fled from, resisted, bribed, or would at last remit his inflictions through very weariness of tormenting. But not so with the consciousness of wrong.... It will not sleep, nor tire, nor relent.

Ignorance has been well represented under the similitude of a dungeon, where, though it is full of life, yet darkness and silence reign. But in society the bars and locks have been broken; the dungeon itself is demolished; the prisoners are out; they are in the midst of us. We have no security but to teach and renovate them.

If in studying the works and laws of Nature, we are walking with its great Author and Sustainer, then we behold this department of truth as He beholds it; we recognize the order of nature and the relations of cause and effect as He recognizes them, and the whole tendency of this must be to bring our minds into grateful harmony with His.

When was there ever written or published a more fanatical document than the Declaration of Independence?--a torch to set the world on fire.