With every exertion, the best of men can do but a moderate amount of good; but it seems in the power of the most contemptible individual to do incalculable mischief.
Who ever hears of fat men heading a riot, or herding together in turbulent mobs? No – no, your lean, hungry men who are continually worrying society, and setting the whole community by the ears.
Those men are most apt to be obsequious and conciliating abroad, who are under the discipline of shrews at home.
The natural effect of sorrow over the dead is to refine and elevate the mind.
Young lawyers attend the courts, not because they have business there, but because they have no business.
Rising genius always shoots out its rays from among the clouds, but these will gradually roll away and disappear as it ascends to its steady luster.
I’ve had it with you and your emotional constipation!
There is a remembrance of the dead, to which we turn even from the charms of the living. These we would not exchange for the song of pleasure or the bursts of revelry.
Acting provides the fulfillment of never being fulfilled. You’re never as good as you’d like to be. So there’s always something to hope for.
The idol of today pushes the hero of yesterday out of our recollection; and will, in turn, be supplanted by his successor of tomorrow.
To one given to day-dreaming, and fond of losing himself in reveries, a sea-voyage is full of subjects for meditation; but then they are the wonders of the deep and of the air, and rather tend to abstract the mind from worldly themes.
It is not poverty so much as pretense that harasses a ruined man – the struggle between a proud mind and an empty purse – the keeping up of a hollow show that must soon come to an end.
The land of literature is a fairy land to those who view it at a distance, but, like all other landscapes, the charm fades on a nearer approach, and the thorns and briars become visible.
There was one species of despotism under which he had long groaned, and that was petticoat government.
From its peaceful bosom spring none but fond regrets and tender recollections.
A woman is more considerate in affairs of love than a man; because love is more the study and business of her life.
Washington, in fact, had very little private life, but was eminently a public character.
The moan of the whip-poor-will from the hillside; the boding cry of the tree-toad, that harbinger of storm; the dreary hooting of the screechowl.
I profess not to know how women’s hearts are wooed and won. To me they have always been matters of riddle and admiration.
After all, it is the divinity within that makes the divinity without; and I have been more fascinated by a woman of talent and intelligence, though deficient in personal charms, than I have been by the most regular beauty.
A tart temper never mellows with age, and a sharp tongue is the only edged tool that grows keener with constant use.