“We are sure to be losers when we quarrel with ourselves; it is civil war.”

It is the briefest yet wisest maxim which tells us to meddle not.

For one man who sincerely pities our misfortunes, there are a thousand who sincerely hate our success.

Logic and metaphysics make use of more tools than all the rest of the sciences put together, and do the least work.

As no roads are so rough as those that have just been mended, so no sinners are so intolerant as those that have just turned saints.

Silence is less injurious than a weak reply.

Next to acquiring good friends, the best acquisition is that of good books.

It is doubtful whether mankind are most indebted to those who like Bacon and Butler dig the gold from the mine of literature, or to those who, like Paley, purify it, stamp it, fix its real value, and give it currency and utility.

We often pretend to fear what we really despise, and more often despise what we really fear.

Mystery magnifies danger as the fog the sun.

A high degree of intellectual refinement in the female is the surest pledge society can have for the improvement of the male.

He that swells in prosperity will be sure to shrink in adversity.

Happiness, that grand mistress of the ceremonies in the dance of life, impels us through all its mazes and meanderings, but leads none of us by the same route.

Happiness leads none of us by the same route.

Temperate men drink the most, because they drink the longest.

That cowardice is incorrigible which the love of power cannot overcome.

Money is the most envied, but the least enjoyed. Health is the most enjoyed, but the least envied.

I can imagine no greater misfortune for a cultured people than to see in the hands of the rulers not only the civil, but also the religious power.

In the 1960s, the civil rights movement was about getting to know your culture, your history. I know all about my history.

Atheists have just as much civil right to teach atheism as Christians have to teach Christianity; agnostics have just as much right to teach agnosticism as Christians have to teach their religion.

What’s so civil about war anyway?

Civil disobedience has an honourable history, and when the urgency and moral clarity cross a certain threshold, then I think that civil disobedience is quite understandable, and it has a role to play.

We’ve talked more about civil rights after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 than we talked about it before 1964.

We have to put a stop to the idea that it is a part of everybody’s civil rights to say whatever he pleases.

There’s a crying need for civility across the board. We need to and will come together in the name of Jesus.