“An Omnipotent Creator Who could make such a painful world is to me sometimes as hard to believe in as to believe in blind matter behind everything.”

Acknowledging the intellectual difficulty posed by suffering · Recorded conversation in the Memoir

• Despair
• Faith
• Truth

“The happiness of a man in this life does not consist in the absence, but in the mastery, of his passions.”

Popularly attributed to Tennyson, but the original context is difficult to verify · Conversation, as commonly attributed

• Joy
• Truth

“I think public opinion much more likely to be influenced by steady firm action than by much talking and writing.”

Valuing consistent conduct above rhetoric as an instrument of change · Letter to a correspondent, 1889

• Truth