Men do not care how nobly they live, but only how long, although it is within the reach of every man to live nobly, but within no man’s power to live long.
The artist finds a greater pleasure in painting than in having completed the picture.
You talk one way, you live another.
Take away ambition and vanity, and where will be your heroes and patriots?
Many things have fallen only to rise higher.
No evil is without its compensation. The less money, the less trouble; the less favor, the less envy. Even in those cases which put us out of wits, it is not the loss itself, but the estimate of the loss that troubles us.
Nothing is so false as human life, nothing so treacherous. God knows no one would have accepted it as a gift, if it had not been given without our knowledge.
I persist on praising not the life I lead, but that which I ought to lead. I follow it at a mighty distance, crawling.
Most people fancy themselves innocent of those crimes of which they cannot be convicted.
No crime has been without a precedent.
While crime is punished it yet increases.
No one can have a peaceful life who thinks too much about lengthening it.
A dwarf can stand on a mountain, he’s no taller.
How great would be our peril if our slaves began to number us!
The mind is never right but when it is at peace within itself; the soul is in heaven even while it is in the flesh, if it be purged of its natural corruptions, and taken up with divine thoughts, and contemplations.
The man who can be compelled knows not how to die.
Religion worships God, while superstition profanes that worship.
Many men provoke others to overreach them by excessive suspicion; their extraordinary distrust in some sort justifies the deceit.
Hardly a man will you find who could live with his door open.
Trifling trouble find utterance; deeply felt pangs are silent.