Quote collection
437 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"The emptiness and folly of retaliation are apparent from every example which can be brought forward. Not only Jesus Christ, but the most eminent professors of every sect of philosophy, have reasoned against this futile superstition."
"The thoughts which the word "God" suggests to the human mind are susceptible of as many variations as human minds themselves."
"The nature of a narrow and malevolent spirit is so essentially incompatible with happiness as to render it inaccessible to the influences of the benignant God."
"Poetry strengthens that faculty which is the organ of the moral nature of man, in the same manner as exercise strengthens a limb."
"GOVERNMENT has no rights; it is a delegation from several individuals for the purpose of securing their own. It is therefore just, only so far as it exists by their consent, useful only so far as it operates to their well-being."
"No man has a right to disturb the public peace, by personally resisting the execution of a law however bad. He ought to acquiesce, using at the same time the utmost powers of his reason, to promote its repeal."
"I see the waves upon the shore, Like light dissolved in star-showers, thrown."
"Jealousy's eyes are green."
"Jesus Christ opposed with earnest eloquence the panic fears and hateful superstitions which have enslaved mankind for ages."
"Sorrow, terror, anguish, despair itself are often the chosen expressions of an approximation to the highest good. Our sympathy in tragic fiction depends on this principle; tragedy delights by affording a shadow of the pleasure which exists in pain. This is the source also of the melancholy which is inseparable from the sweetest melody. The pleasure that is in sorrow is sweeter than the pleasure of pleasure itself."
"God is represented as infinite, eternal, incomprehensible; he is contained under every predicate in non that the logic of ignorance could fabricate."
"He wanders, like a day-appearing dream, Through the dim wildernesses of the mind; Through desert woods and tracts, which seem Like ocean, homeless, boundless, unconfined."
"Whatever strengthens and purifies the affections, enlarges the imagination, and adds spirit to sense, is useful."
"Kiss me, so long but as a kiss may last!"
"Love, from its awful throne of patient power In the wise heart, from the last giddy hour Of dread endurance, from the slippery, steep, And narrow verge of crag-like agony, springs And folds over the world its healing wings."
"I am convinced that there can be no regeneration of mankind until laughter is put down."
"Whatever may be his true and final destination, there is a spirit within him at enmity with nothingness and dissolution. This is the character of all life and being."