Beauty rests on necessities.
Every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact.
I can reason down or deny everything, except this perpetual Belly: feed he must and will, and I cannot make him respectable.
Infancy conforms to nobody: all conform to it, so that one babe commonly makes four or five out of the adults who prattle and play to it.
Every man believes that he has greater possibilities.
Man is a shrewd inventor, and is ever taking the hint of a new machine from his own structure, adapting some secret of his own anatomy in iron, wood, and leather, to some required function in the work of the world.
If government knew how, I should like to see it check, not multiply, the population. When it reaches its true law of action, every man that is born will be hailed as essential.
He that gives good advice builds with one hand; he that gives good counsel and example builds with both.
A virtue to be serviceable must, like gold, be alloyed with some commoner, but more durable alloy.
I lose my respect for the man who can make the mystery of sex the subject of a coarse jest, yet when you speak earnestly and seriously on the subject, is silent.
He who praises every body, praises nobody.
You cannot be a hero without being a coward.
The habit of looking on the best side of every event is worth more than a thousand pounds a years.
Personally, I’m always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught.
Self-sacrifice enables us to sacrifice other people without blushing.
It is not fair to ask of others what you are not willing to do yourself.
The most I can do for my friend is simply to be his friend.
Be a little careful about your library. Do you foresee what you will do with it? Very little to be sure. But the real question is, What it will do with you?
Virtue is too often merely local.
Words are alive; cut them and they bleed.
Be careless in your dress if you will, but keep a tidy soul.
What loneliness is more lonely than distrust?
