“Lest he should wander irretrievably from the right path, he stands still.”
“The most silent people are generally those who think most highly of themselves.”
“The are of will-making chiefly consists in baffling the importunity of expectation.”
“We find many things to which the prohibition of them constitutes the only temptation.”
“Every one in a crowd has the power to throw dirt; none out of ten have the inclination.”
“Cunning is the art of concealing our own defects, and discovering the weaknesses of others.”
“Taste is nothing but an enlarged capacity for receiving pleasure from works of imagination.”
“Our repugnance to death increases in proportion to our consciousness of having lived in vain.”
“I would like to spend my whole life traveling, if I could borrow another life to spend at home.”
“There is no prejudice so strong as that which arises from a fancied exemption from all prejudice.”
“There are no rules for friendship. It must be left to itself. We cannot force it any more than love.”
“No man is truly great who is great only in his lifetime. The test of greatness is the page of history.”
“A strong passion for any object will ensure success, for the desire of the end will point out the means.”
“The love of liberty is the love of others; the love of power is the love of ourselves. We cannot force love.”
“People of genius do not excel in any profession because they work in it, they work in it because they excel.”
“The smallest pain in our little finger gives us more concern than the destruction of millions of our fellow beings.”
“Old friendships are like meats served up repeatedly, cold, comfortless, and distasteful. The stomach turns against them.”
“A hypocrite despises those whom he deceives, but has no respect for himself. He would make a dupe of himself too, if he could.”
“There are many who talk on from ignorance rather than from knowledge, and who find the former an inexhaustible fund of conversation.”
“There is no one thoroughly despicable. We cannot descend much lower than an idiot; and an idiot has some advantages over a wise man.”
“There is a secret pride in every human heart that revolts at tyranny. You may order and drive an individual, but you cannot make him respect you.”
“Modesty is the lowest of the virtues, and is a real confession of the deficiency it indicates. He who undervalues himself is justly undervalued by others.”
“Look up, laugh loud, talk big, keep the color in your cheek and the fire in your eye, adorn your person, maintain your health, your beauty and your animal spirits.”
“Anyone who has passed through the regular gradations of a classical education, and is not made a fool by it, may consider himself as having had a very narrow escape.”
“The love of fame is almost another name for the love of excellence; or it is the ambition to attain the highest excellence, sanctioned by the highest authority, that of time.”
“A nickname is the heaviest stone that the devil can throw at a man. It is a bugbear to the imagination, and, though we do not believe in it, it still haunts our apprehensions.”
“The definition of genius is that it acts unconsciously; and those who have produced immortal works, have done so without knowing how or why. The greatest power operates unseen.”
“There is not a more mean, stupid, dastardly, pitiless, selfish, spiteful, envious, ungrateful animal than the Public. It is the greatest of cowards, for it is afraid of itself.”
“The most sensible people to be met with in society are men of business and of the world, who argue from what they see and know, instead of spinning cobweb distinctions of what things ought to be.”
“There is nothing more likely to drive a man mad, than the being unable to get rid of the idea of the distinction between right and wrong, and an obstinate, constitutional preference of the true to the agreeable.”