The moral sense, or conscience, is as much a part of man as his leg or arm. It is given to all human beings in a stronger or weaker degree, as force of members is given them in a greater or less degree. It may be strengthened by exercise, as may any particular limb of the body. This sense is submitted, indeed, in some degree, to the guidance of reason; but it is a small stock which is required for this: even a less one than what we call common sense. State a moral case to a ploughman and a professor. The former will decide it as well, and often better than the latter, because he has not been led astray by artificial rules.

He who made us would have been a pitiful bungler, if he had made the rules of our moral conduct a matter of science. For one man of science, there are thousand…

Above all things, lose no occasion of exercising your dispositions to be grateful, to be generous, to be charitable, to be humane, to be true, just, firm, orde…

And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes,…

So long as you are a slave to the opinions of the many you have not yet approached freedom or tasted its nectar: But I do not mean by this that we ought to be …

In men whom men condemn as ill I find so much of goodness still. In men whom men pronounce divine I find so much of sin and blot I do not dare to draw a line B…

L'homme n'est ni ange ni bete, et le malheur veut que qui veut faire l'ange fait la bete.