To see the futurity of the species has always been the privilege of the intellectual elite, or of those who have learnt from them; to have the feelin… - John Stuart Mill

But I now thought that this end [one's happiness] was only to be attained by not making it the direct end. Those only are happy (I thought) who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness[....] Aiming thus at something else, they find happiness along the way[....] Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so.

A person may cause evil to others not only by his actions but by his inaction, and in either case he is justly accountable to them for the injury.

Human nature is not a machine to be built after a model, and set to do exactly the work prescribed for it, but a tree, which requires to grow and develop itself on all sides, according to the tendency of the inward forces which make it a living thing.