The fear of hell may indeed in some desperate cases, like the moxa, give the first rouse from a moral lethargy, or, like the green venom of copper, by evacuating poison or a dead load from the inner man, prepare it for nobler ministrations and medicines from the realm of light and life, that nourish while they stimulate.
The doing evil to avoid an evil cannot be good.
Enlist the interests of stern morality and religious enthusiasm in the cause of religious liberty, as in the time of the old Puritans, and they will be irresistible.
The rules of prudence in general, like the laws of the stone tables, are, for the most part, prohibitive. Thou shalt not, is their characteristic formula; and it is an especial part of Christian prudence that it should be so.
Exclusively of the abstract sciences, the largest and worthiest portion of our knowledge consists of aphorisms, and the greatest and best of men is but an aphorism.
You begin with the attempt to popularize learning and philosophy; but you will end in the plebification of knowledge.
To write or talk concerning any subject, without having previously taken the pains to understand it, is a breach of the duty which we owe to ourselves, though it may be no offence against the laws of the land. The privilege of talking and even publishing nonsense is necessary in a free state; but the more sparingly we make use of it the better.
In former times a popular work meant one that adapted the results of studious meditation, or scientific research, to the capacity of the people: presenting in the concrete by instances and examples what had been ascertained in the abstract and by the discovery of the law. Now, on the other hand, that is a popular work which gives back to the people their own errors and prejudices, and flatters the many by creating them, under the title of the public, into a supreme and unappealable tribunal of intellectual excellence.
The first great requisite is absolute sincerity. Falsehood and disguise are miseries and misery-makers, under whatever strength of sympathy, or desire to prolong happy thoughts in others for their sake or your own only as sympathizing with theirs, it may originate. All sympathy not consistent with acknowledged virtue is but disguised selfishness.
Chance is but the pseudonyme of God for those particular cases which He does not choose to subscribe openly with his own sign-manual.