Matters of religion should never be matters of controversy. We neither argue with a lover about his taste, nor condemn him, if we are just, for knowing so human a passion.

• Friendship is almost always the union of a part of one mind with a part of another people are friends in spots.
• The body is an instrument, the mind its function, the witness and reward of its operation.
• All living souls welcome whatsoever they are ready to cope with all else they ignore, or pronounce to be monstrous and wrong, or deny to be possible.
• There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval. The dark background which death supplies brings out the tender colors of life in all their purity.
• America is a young country with an old mentality.
• Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. In the first stage of life the mind is frivolous and easily distracted, it misses progress by failing in consecutiveness and persistence. This is the condition of children and barbarians, in which instinct has learned nothing from experience.
• Before you contradict an old man, my fair friend, you should endeavor to understand him.
• Knowledge of what is possible is the beginning of happiness.
• Those who speak most of progress measure it by quantity and not by quality.
• Love is only half the illusion the lover, but not his love, is deceived.