I have not the smallest sentimental sympathy with the negro; don't believe in him at all, in short. But it is clear to me that slavery means, for the white man, bad political economy; bad social morality; bad internal political organisation, and a bad influence upon free labour and freedom all over the world.
At the present time the important question for England is not the duration of her coal, but the due comprehension of the truths of science, and the labours of her scientific men.
It is better for a man to go wrong in freedom than to go right in chains.
A good book is comparable to a piece of meat, and fools are as flies who swarm to it, each for the purpose of depositing and hatching his own particular maggot of an idea.
Children work a greater metamorphosis in men than any other condition of life. They ripen one wonderfully and make life ten times better worth having than it was.