Prejudices, it is well known, are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened or fertilized by education: they grow there, firm as weeds among stones.
I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.
Friends always forget those whom fortune forsakes.
There is no happiness like that of being loved by your fellow-creatures, and feeling that your presence is an addition to their comfort.
The soul, fortunately, has an interpreter – often an unconscious, but still a truthful interpreter – in the eye.
The human and fallible should not arrogate a power with which the divine and perfect alone can be safely entrusted.
Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity, or registering wrongs.
Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour; stringent are they; inviolate they shall be. If at my individual convenience I might break them, what would be their worth?
It is not violence that best overcomes hate – nor vengeance that most certainly heals injury.
If people were always kind and obedient to those who are cruel and unjust, the wicked people would have it all their own way: they would never feel afraid, and so they would never alter, but would grow worse and worse.
If all the world hated you, and believed you wicked, while your own conscience approved you, and absolved you from guilt, you would not be without friends.
I would always rather be happy than dignified.
