Opportunity makes a thief.
Discern of the coming on of years, and think not to do the same things still; for age will not be defied.
Atheism leaves a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to reputation; all of which may be guides to an outward moral virtue, even if religion vanished; but religious superstition dismounts all these and erects an absolute monarchy in the minds of men.
It was prettily devised of Aesop, The fly sat on the axle tree of the chariot wheel and said, what dust do I raise!
Speech of yourself ought to be seldom and well chosen.
Reading maketh a full man; and writing an axact man. And, therefore, if a man write little, he need have a present wit; and if he read little, he need have much cunning to seem to know which he does not.
Next to religion, let your care be to promote justice.
The best augury of a man’s success in his profession is that he thinks it the finest in the world.
As long as I can conceive something better than myself I cannot be easy unless I am striving to bring it into existence or clearing the way for it.
When we give cheerfully and accept gratefully, everyone is blessed.
Every man is a quotation from all his ancestors.
We mustn’t be stiff and stand-off, you know. We must be thoroughly democratic, and patronize everybody without distinction of class.
Worldly faces never look so worldly as at a funeral. They have the same effect of grating incongruity as the sound of a coarse voice breaking the solemn silence of night.
This comes of James teaching me to think for myself, and never to hold back out of fear of what other people may think of me. It works beautifully as long as I think the same things as he does.
Virtue consists, not in abstaining from vice, but in not desiring it.
The whole history of the world is summed up in the fact that, when nations are strong, they are not always just, and when they wish to be just, they are no longer strong.
Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them.
You must often make erasures if you mean to write what is worthy of being read a second time; and don’t labor for the admiration of the crowd, but be content with a few choice readers.
I didn’t find my friends; the good Lord gave them to me.
Images also help me find and realise ideas. I look at hundreds of very different, contrasting images and I pinch details from them, rather like people who eat from other people
Studies perfect nature and are perfected still by experience.
Each thought is a nail that is driven In structures that cannot decay; And the mansion at last will be given To us as we build it each day.
