To diminish the cases in which the assistance of others is felt absolutely necessary is the only genuine road to independence.

It is necessary for him who would endure existence with patience that he should conceive himself to be something - that he should be persuaded he is not a cipher in the muster-roll of man.

There is nothing that human imagination can figure brilliant and enviable that human genius and skill do not aspire to realize.

Men who do not contend in earnest can have little warmth and fervor in what they undertake, and are more than half prepared to betray the cause, in the vindication of which they have engaged their services.

Law is made for man and not man for the law. Wherever we can be sure that the most valuable interests of a nation require that we should decide one way, that way we ought to decide.

We cannot do justice to the deeds of former times if we do not in some degree remove ourselves from the circumstances in which we stand and substitute those by which the real actors were surrounded.

How nations and races of men are to be so governed as may be most conducive to the improvement and happiness of all is one of the most interesting questions that can be offered to our consideration.

The soul of man is one of those subtle and evanescent substances that, as long as they remain still, the organ of sight does not remark; it must become agitated to become visible.

There are so many ways in which the heart of man conceals itself from man!

Enthusiasm is always an interesting spectacle. When it expresses itself with an honest and artless eloquence, it is difficult to listen to it and not, in some degree, to catch the flame.

Perhaps the majority of human beings never think of standing by themselves, and choosing their own employments, till the sentence has been regularly promulgated to them, 'It is time for you to take care of yourself.'

Let no man despise the oracles of books! A book is a dead man, a sort of mummy, embowelled and embalmed, but that once had flesh and motion and a boundless variety of determinations and actions.

Every boy learns more in his hours of play than in his hours of labor. In school, he lays in the materials of thinking, but in his sports, he actually thinks: he whets his faculties, and he opens his eyes.

The man who plays his part upon the theatre of life almost always maintains what may be called an artificial character.

The Italian character in general is full of animation, and the natives enter into the interests and welfare of the stranger before them with a fervor that forbids all doubt of its sincerity and that is truly surprising.

Occupation - pressing occupation that will not be said nay - is a sovereign remedy for grief.

It is one of the oldest maxims of moral prudence: Do not, by aspiring to what is impracticable, lose the opportunity of doing the good you can effect!

What is high birth to him to whom high birth has never been the theme of his contemplation? What is a throne to him who has never dreamed of a throne?

Invisible things are the only realities; invisible things alone are the things that shall remain.

I know not how it is: there are some businesses for which dullness seems to be a qualification.

We covet experience; we have a secret desire to learn, not from cold prohibition, but from trial, whether those things, which are not without a semblance of good, are really so ill as they are described to us.

How different a creature is man in society and man in solitude!

The world is all alike. Those that seem better than their neighbours are only more artful. They mean the same thing, though they take a different road.

Act up to the magnitude of your destiny.

When we look on the roses and gaiety of youth, the mournful idea of mortality is altogether alien to our thoughts. We have heard of it as a speculation and a tale, but nothing but experience can bring it home to us.

Soundness of understanding is connected with freedom of enquiry; consequently, opinion should, as far as public security will admit, be exempted from restraint.

Duty is that mode of action which constitutes the best application of the capacity of the individual to the general advantage.

Government was intended to suppress injustice, but its effect has been to embody and perpetuate it.

Government, as it was forced upon mankind by their vices, so has it commonly been the creature of their ignorance and mistake.

The true object of moral and political disquisition is pleasure or happiness.

We cannot, any of us, do all the things of which mankind stand in need; we must have fellow-labourers.

We have, all of us, our duties. Every action of our lives, and every word that we utter, will either conduce to or detract from the discharge of our duty.

The four principal oral instructors to whom I feel my mind indebted for improvement were Joseph Fawcet, Thomas Holcroft, George Dyson, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

I was famous in our college for calm and impassionate discussion; for one whole summer, I rose at five and went to bed at midnight, that I might have sufficient time for theology and metaphysics.

I was brought up in great tenderness, and though my mind was proud to independence, I was never led to much independence of feeling.

England has been called, with great felicity of conception, 'the land of liberty and good sense.' We have preserved many of the advantages of a free people, which the nations of the Continent have long since lost.

The love of independence and dislike of unjust treatment is the source of a thousand virtues.

I am an enemy to revolutions. I abhor, both from temper and from the clearest judgment I am able to form, all violent convulsions in the affairs of men.

A world of derived beings, an immense, wide creation, requires an extended scale with various ranks and orders of existence.

Every man has a certain sphere of discretion which he has a right to expect shall not be infringed by his neighbours. This right flows from the very nature of man.

He has no right to his life when his duty calls him to resign it. Other men are bound... to deprive him of life or liberty, if that should appear in any case to be indispensably necessary to prevent a greater evil.

The real or supposed rights of man are of two kinds, active and passive; the right in certain cases to do as we list; and the right we possess to the forbearance or assistance of other men.

Revolution is engendered by an indignation with tyranny, yet is itself pregnant with tyranny.

One of the prerogatives by which man is eminently distinguished from all other living beings inhabiting this globe of earth, consists in the gift of reason.

Justice is the sum of all moral duty.

The cause of justice is the cause of humanity. Its advocates should overflow with universal good will. We should love this cause, for it conduces to the general happiness of mankind.

My thoughts will be taken up with the future or the past, with what is to come or what has been. Of the present there is necessarily no image.

The lessons of their early youth regulated the conduct of their riper years.

What indeed is life, unless so far as it is enjoyed? It does not merit the name.

Learning is the ally, not the adversary of genius... he who reads in a proper spirit, can scarcely read too much.