There is a deeper pleasure in following truth to the scaffold or the cross, than in joining the multitudinous retinue, and mingling our shouts with theirs, when victorious error celebrates its triumphs.
Interpretation
Pursuing truth, even at great personal cost, brings more fulfillment than celebrating false victories with the crowd.
This quote emphasizes the value of adhering to truth, even when it leads to suffering or hardship. It suggests that the deep satisfaction derived from standing for what is right and true far surpasses the fleeting pleasure of joining in the celebrations of those who have achieved temporary success through falsehood or error.
In practice
This quote could be used in a graduation speech to encourage students to seek truth in their future endeavors.
Under the Providence of God, our means of education are the grand machinery by which the 'raw material' of human nature can be worked up into inventors and discoverers, into skilled artisans and scientific farmers, into scholars and jurists, into the founders of benevolent institutions, and the great expounders of ethical and theological science.
Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.
There may be frugality which is not economy. A community, that withholds the means of education from its children, withholds the bread of life and starves their souls.
Let us labor for that larger comprehension of truth, and that more thorough repudiation of error, which shall make the history of mankind a series of ascending developments.
Great knowledge is requisite to instruct those who have been well instructed, but still greater knowledge is requisite to instruct those who have been neglected.
Virtue is an angel, but she is a blind one, and must ask Knowledge to show her the pathway that leads to her goal.
Look closely at those who patronize you. Half are unfeeling, half untaught.
There is only one you. God wanted you to be you. Don't you dare change just because you're outnumbered!
Do not work primarily for money; do your duty to patients first and let the money follow; our life is short, we don't live twice; the whirlwind will pick up the leaves and spin them, but then it will drop them and they will form a pile.
When you're on your own, you have all the self-censorship that everybody has when they try and write. All the little voices that say, 'No, you can't write that, what will they think of that?'
The world's flattery and hypocrisy is a sweet morsel: eat less of it, for it is full of fire. Its fire is hidden while its taste is manifest, but its smoke becomes visible in the end.
I followed my heart without breaking any rules.
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