We are free to yield to truth.
Make a good use of the present.
If you would have me weep, you must first of all feel grief yourself.
He that has given today may, if he so please, take away tomorrow.
Believe that each day that shines on you is your last.
Nothing is too high for the daring of mortals: we storm heaven itself in our folly.
A word once uttered can never be recalled.
The problems of victory are more agreeable than those of defeat, but they are no less difficult.
By the rude bridge that arched the flood,Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,Here once the embattled farmers stood,And fired the shot heard round the world.
The love of life is necessary to the vigorous prosecution of any undertaking.
If all misfortunes were laid in one common heap whence everyone must take an equal portion, most people would be contented to take their own and depart.
Be a lamp, a lifeboat, a ladder. Help someone’s soul heal. Walk out of your house like a shepherd.
Wine makes a man better pleased with himself. I do not say that it makes him more pleasing to others… This is one of the disadvantages of wine, it makes a man mistake words for thoughts.
A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him, I may think aloud.
Sir, he was dull in company, dull in his closet, dull everywhere. He was dull in a new way, and that made many people think him great.
Life affords no higher pleasure than that of surmounting difficulties, passing from one step of success to another, forming new wishes and seeing them gratified.
A woman’s heart must be of such a size and no larger, else it must be pressed small, like Chinese feet; her happiness is to be made as cakes are, by a fixed recipe.
Too often the strong, silent man is silent only because he does not know what to say, and is reputed strong only because he has remained silent.
The general root of superstition is that men observe when things hit, and not when they miss; and commit to memory the one, and forget and pass over the other.
There is nothing you can say in answer to a compliment. I have been complimented myself a great many times, and they always embarrass me-I always feel that they have not said enough.
There is then creative reading as well as creative writing. When the mind is braced by labor and invention, the page of whatever book we read becomes luminous with manifold allusion. Every sentence is doubly significant, and the sense of our author is as broad as the world.
Of all virtues and dignities of the mind, goodness is the greatest, being the character of the Deity; and without it, man is a busy, mischievous, wretched thing.
