“I have also seen children successfully surmounting the effects of an evil inheritance. That is due to purity being an inherent attribute of the soul.”

“But every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle.”

“Absorb what is useful, discard what is useless and add what is specifically your own”

“Often after years of deep investment into others we are shocked and disappointed that they simply didn’t get who we really are.”

“There is nothing wrong about having feelings, as long as you do what is right.”

“We have no right to prejudice another in his civil enjoyments because he is of another church.”

“A good fight should be like a small play, but played seriously.”

“We have a great deal of worth in the eyes of God. I never tire of saying over and over again that God loves us. It is a wonderful thing that God Himself loves me tenderly. That is why we should have courage, joy, and the conviction that nothing can separate us from the love of Christ.”

“The end of life is not to be happy, nor to achieve pleasure and avoid pain, but to do the will of God, come what may.”

“Anything good, honorable, and desirable in life is based on love. Anything bad or evil is simply life without the love involved.”

“You can’t gather much if you won’t go on risk expedition. Leaders never fear the thorns; they’ll still go in for the beautiful roses no matter the number of pricks they’ll get.”

“It will forever remain an accusation and a challenge to all men and women of conscience that it took as long as it has, before all of us stood up to say enough is enough.” 

“To your request of my opinion of the manner in which a newspaper should be conducted, so as to be most useful, I should answer, ‘by restraining it to true facts & sound principles only.’ Yet I fear such a paper would find few subscribers. It is a melancholy truth, that a suppression of the press could not more compleatly deprive the nation of its benefits, than is done by its abandoned prostitution to falsehood. Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. The real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knolege with the lies of the day. I really look with commiseration over the great body of my fellow citizens, who, reading newspapers, live & die in the belief, that they have known something of what has been passing in the world in their time; whereas the accounts they have read in newspapers are just as true a history of any other period of the world as of the present, except that the real names of the day are affixed to their fables. General facts may indeed be collected from them, such as that Europe is now at war, that Bonaparte has been a successful warrior, that he has subjected a great portion of Europe to his will, &c., &c.; but no details can be relied on. I will add, that the man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods & errors. He who reads nothing will still learn the great facts, and the details are all false.” —Letter to John Norvell, 14 June 1807 [Works 10:417--18]” 

“Perhaps well-meaning individuals temporarily forgot that we live in a nation where the majority does not impose its will on the minority simply because it can.”

“No one really knows why they are alive until they know what they'd die for.”