All history shows that, in exact proportion as nations advance in civilisation, the accounts of miracles taking place among them become rarer and rarer, until at last they entirely cease.

Anxiety and Ennui are the Scylla and Charybdis on which the bark of human happiness is most often wrecked.

There are times in the lives of most of us, when we would have given all the world to be as we were but yesterday, though that yesterday had passed over us unappreciated and unenjoyed.

The simple record of these three short years of active life has done more to regenerate and soften mankind than all the discourses of philosophers and all the exhortations of moralists.

Passions weaken, but habits strengthen, with age, and it is the great task of youth to set the current of habit and to form the tastes which are most productive of happiness in life.

The unweary, unostentatious, and inglorious crusade of England against slavery may probably be regarded as among the three or four perfectly virtuous pages comprised in the history of nations.

In proportion to its power, Protestantism has been as persecuting as Catholicism.

The contraction of theological influence has been at once the best measure, and the essential condition of intellectual advance.

One of the most important lessons that experience teaches is that, on the whole, success depends more upon character than upon either intellect or fortune.

The Augustinian doctrine of the damnation of unbaptized infants and the Calvinistic doctrine of reprobation . . . surpass in atrocity any tenets that have ever been admitted into any pagan creed.

Whenever the clergy were at the elbow of the civil arm, no matter whether they were Catholic or Protestant, persecution was the result.

Freedom is a terrible gift, and the theory behind all dictatorships is that "the people" do no want freedom.

Trust was now a four-letter word.

God shall shine through the person you are and not the mistakes you made.

There is a Pirate in every one of us

I don't lose any sleep at night over the potential for failure. I cannot even spell the word.

I love all kinds of bread. Whenever I crave junk food, I want salty things like peanuts or potato chips.

I love musk oil. There's something about musk that makes it memorable without being overpowering.

When I'm tired, I rest. I say, 'I can't be a superwoman today.'

Those who speak of our culture as dead or dying have a quarrel with life, and I think they cannot understand its terms, but must endlessly repeat the projection of their own desires.

You only live once. You don't want your tombstone to read: 'Played it Safe.'