Character is a fact, and that is much in a world of pretence and concession. [ A. B. Alcott ]

Either we have an immortal soul, or we have not. If we have not, we are beasts, - the ifirst and the wisest of beasts, it may be, but still true beasts. We shall only differ in degree and not in kind, - just as the elephant differs from the slug. But by the concession of the materialists of all the schools, or almost all, we are not of the same kind as beasts, and this also we say from our own consciousness. Therefore, methinks, it must be the possession of the soul within us that makes the difference. [ Coleridge ]