There is no tyrant like custom, and no freedom where its edicts are not resisted.
The light in the world comes principally from two sources,-the sun, and the student’s lamp.
Honesty is not only the first step toward greatness, it is greatness itself.
Books are embalmed minds.
A profusion of fancies and quotations is out of place in a love-letter. True feeling is always direct, and never deviates into by-ways to cull flowers of rhetoric.
Luminous quotations, also, atone, by their interest, for the dulness of an inferior book, and add to the value of a superior work by the variety which they lend to its style and treatment.
He presents me with what is always an acceptable gift who brings me news of a great thought before unknown. He enriches me without impoverishing himself. The judicious quoter, too, helps on what is much needed in the world, a freer circulation of good thoughts, pure feelings, and pleasant fancies.
Hard workers are usually honest; industry lifts them above temptation.
To quote copiously and well, requires taste, judgment, and erudition, a feeling for the beautiful, an appreciation of the noble, and a sense of the profound.
Affliction, like the iron-smith, shapes as it smites.
Passion doesn’t look beyond the moment of its existence.
Enthusiasm is the inspiration of everything great.
It is with charity as with money – the more we stand in need of it, the less we have to give away.
Character is very much a matter of health.
Pure motives do not insure perfect results.
Motives are better than actions. Men drift into crime. Of evil they do more than they contemplate, and of good they contemplate more than they do.
There is a German proverb which says that Take-it-Easy and Live-Long are brothers.
An illusion dissipated is an experience gained.
The language denotes the man. A coarse or refined character finds its expression naturally in a coarse or refined phraseology.
The opinions of the misanthropical rest upon this very partial basis, that they adopt the bad faith of a few as evidence of the worthlessness of all.