The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good, in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it.
Of two pleasures, if there be one which all or almost all who have experience of both give a decided preference, irrespective of any feeling of moral obligation to prefer it, that is the more desirable pleasure.
The dictum that truth always triumphs over persecution is one of the pleasant falsehoods which men repeat after one another till they pass into commonplaces, but which all experience refutes.
Life has a certain flavor for those who have fought and risked all that the sheltered and protected can never experience.
There are many truths of which the full meaning cannot be realized until personal experience has brought it home.
The amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and moral courage it contained. That so few now dare to be eccentric marks the chief danger of the time.
Eccentricity has always abounded when and where strength of character had abounded and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and courage which it contained.