Who aspires to remain leader must keep in advance of his column. His fear must not play traitor to his occasions. The instant he falls into line with his followers, a bolder spirit may throw himself at the head of the movement initiated, and in that moment his leadership is gone.
The best evidence of merit is a cordial recognition of it whenever and wherever it may be found.
Merit is never so conspicuous as when coupled with an obscure origin, just as the moon never appears so lustrous as when it emerges from a cloud.
Justice, not the majority, should rule.
Logic invents as many fallacies as it detects; it is a good weapon, but as liable to be used in a bad as in a good cause.
The lively and mercurial are as open books, with the leaves turned down at the notable passages. Their souls sit at the windows of their eyes, seeing and to be seen.
The past is the sepulchre of our dead emotions.
How like a railway tunnel is the poor man’s life, with the light of childhood at one end, the intermediate gloom, and only the glimmer of a future life at the other extremity!
Care, admitted as guest, quickly turns to be master.
Give me the character and I will forecast the event.
Most books fail, not so much from a want of ability in their authors, as from an absence in their productions of a thorough development of their ability.
We give our best affections to the beautiful, only our second best to the useful.
Mortal beauty stings while it delights.
Troubles forereckoned are doubly suffered.
Neither love nor ambition, as it has often been shown, can brook a division of its empire in the heart.
The heart contracts as the pocket expands.
An eager pursuit of fortune is inconsistent with a severe devotion to truth. The heart must grow tranquil before the thought can become searching.
Genuine religion is matter of feeling rather than matter of opinion.
Intellectually, as politically, the direction of all true progress is towards greater freedom, and along an endless succession of ideas.
Tis but a short journey across the isthmus of Now.