A mental stain can neither be blotted out by the passage of time nor washed away by any waters.
Men decide far more problems by hate, love, lust, rage, sorrow, joy, hope, fear, illusion or some other inward emotion, than by reality, authority, any legal standard, judicial precedent, or statute.
If a man cannot feel the power of God when he looks upon the stars, then I doubt whether he is capable of any feeling at all.
So it may well be believed that when I found him taking a complete holiday, with a vast supply of books at command, he had the air of indulging in a literary debauch, if the term may be applied to so honorable an occupation.
Few are those who wish to be endowed with virtue rather than to seem so.
Hours and days and months and years go by; the past returns no more, and what is to be we cannot know; but whatever the time gives us in which we live, we should therefore be content.
To teach is a necessity, to please is a sweetness, to persuade is a victory.
We must not only obtain Wisdom: we must enjoy her.
Nature herself has imprinted on the minds of all the idea of God.
Your enemies can kill you, but only your friends can hurt you.
Thus nature has no love for solitude, and always leans, as it were, on some support; and the sweetest support is found in the most intimate friendship.
The mind becomes accustomed to things by the habitual sight of them, and neither wonders nor inquires about the reasons for things it sees all the time.
It is our own evil thoughts which madden us.
The searching-out and thorough investigation of truth ought to be the primary study of man.
Man’s best support is a very dear friend.
No one could ever meet death for his country without the hope of immortality.
The first bond of society is the marriage tie; the next our children; then the whole family of our house, and all things in common.
To freemen, threats are impotent.
For surely to be wise is the most desirable thing in all the world.
A perverse temper and fretful disposition will make any state of life whatsoever unhappy.