“It is hardly possible not to suspect the truth of this doctrine of atonement, when we consider that the general maxims to which it may be reduced, are nowhere laid down, or asserted, in the Scriptures, but others quite contrary to them.”

It is no use speaking in soft, gentle tones if everyone else is shouting.

We should like to have some towering geniuses, to reveal us to ourselves in color and fire.

In completing one discovery we never fail to get an imperfect knowledge of others.

To me there is in happiness an element of self-forgetfulness. You lose yourself in something outside yourself when you are happy; just as when you are desperately miserable you are intensely conscious of yourself, are a solid little lump of ego weighing a ton.

Every man, when he comes to be sensible of his natural rights, and to feel his own importance, will consider himself as fully equal to any other person whatever.

In completing one discovery we never fail to get an imperfect knowledge of others of which we could have no idea before, so that we cannot solve one doubt without creating several new ones.

Could we have entered into the mind of Sir Isaac Newton, and have traced all the steps by which he produced his great works, we might see nothing very extraordinary in the process.

This is unfortunately a world in which things find it difficult, frequently impossible, to live up to their names.

The more elaborate our means of our common sense is, the less the common sense it becomes.

The wisdom of one generation will be folly in the next.

But it is not given to every electrician to die in so glorious a manner as the justly envied Richmann.

From the fame opinion of a soul distinct from the body came the practice of praying, first for the dead, and then to them with a long train of other absurd opinions, and superstitious practices.

Too many christians have been chargeable with… confounding the Logos of Plato with that of John , and making of it a second person in the trinity, than which no two things can be more different.

What I have known with respect to myself, has tended much to lessen both my admiration, and my contempt, of others.

Will is nothing more than a particular case of the general doctrine of association of ideas, and therefore a perfectly mechanical thing.

The greater part of critics are parasites, who, if nothing had been written, would find nothing to write.

Whitman will always be a strange and unwonted figure among his country’s poets, and among English poets generally: a cropping out again, after so many centuries, of the old bardic prophetic strain.

I don’t very much enjoy looking at paintings in general. I know too much about them. I take them apart.

As a general rule, the most successful man in life is the man who has the best information.

But I would not intend this to imply that in all imaginable circumstances one must, necessarily, act in accordance with this general responsibility.

Of mankind we may say in general they are fickle, hypocritical, and greedy of gain.

It is easier to know men in general, than men in particular.

The polls show that concern over inequality among the general public rose pretty sharply after the Occupy movement started, very probably as a consequence. And there are other policy issues that came to the fore, which are significant.

I met the surgeon general – he offered me a cigarette.