We are not a nation, so much as a world; for unless we claim all the world for our sire, like Melchisedec, we are without father or mother.
As with ships, so with men; he who turns his back to his foe gives him an advantage.
When among wild beasts, if they menace you, be a wild beast.
The grand points in human nature are the same to-day they were a thousand years ago. The only variability in them is in expression, not in feature.
One would like to know, what were foes made for except to be used?
Tis no dishonor when he who would dishonor you, only dishonors himself.
At banquets surfeit not, but fill; partake, and retire; and eat not again till you crave.
When a companion’s heart of itself overflows, the best one can do is to do nothing.
Surrounded as we are by the wants and woes of our fellow-men, and yet given to follow our own pleasures, regardless of their pains, are we not like people sitting up with a corpse, and making merry in the house of the dead?
Delight, – top-gallant delight is to him, who acknowledges no law or lord, but the Lord his God, and is only a patriot to heaven.
The great God absolute! The centre and circumference of all democracy! His omnipresence, our divine equality!
Poor people make a very poor business of it when they try to seem rich.
Fame is an accident; merit a thing absolute.
The entire merit of a man can never be made known; nor the sum of his demerits, if he have them. We are only known by our names; as letters sealed up, we but read each other’s superscriptions.
The dinner-hour is the summer of the day: full of sunshine, I grant; but not like the mellow autumn of supper.
There are doubts, sir, which, if man have them, it is not man that can solve them.
Both the ancestry and posterity of Grief go further than the ancestry and posterity of Joy.
That great America on the other side of the sphere, Australia.
If you are poor, avoid wine as a costly luxury; if you are rich, shun it as a fatal indulgence. Stick to plain water.
That mortal man who hath more of joy than sorrow in him, that mortal man cannot be true – not true, or undeveloped.