Hitch your wagon to a star.
Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow.
The eloquent man is he who is no eloquent speaker, but who is inwardly drunk with a certain belief.
Painting was called silent poetry and poetry speaking painting.
The most advanced nations are always those who navigate the most.
We do what we must, and call it by the best names.
The world is all gates, all opportunities, strings of tension waiting to be struck.
Forget and forgive. This is not difficult when properly understood. It means forget inconvenient duties, then forgive yourself for forgetting. By rigid practice and stern determination, it comes easy.
He has the deed half done who has made a beginning.
In labouring to be concise, I become obscure.
Imagination is not a talent of some people but is the health of everyone.
To have a great man for a friend seems pleasant to those who have never tried it; those who have, fear it.
Discord is the great ill of mankind; and tolerance is the only remedy for it.
Tomorrow is always another day to make things right.
Nature makes us poor only when we want necessaries, but custom gives the name of poverty to the want of superfluities.
The years teach much what the days never knew.
The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistorical acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.
Beautiful credit! The foundation of modern society. Who shall say that this is not the golden age of mutual trust, of unlimited reliance upon human promises? That is a peculiar condition of society which enables a whole nation to instantly recognize point and meaning in the familiar newspaper anecdote, which puts into the mouth of a distinguished speculator in lands and mines this remark: – I wasn’t worth a cent two years ago, and now I owe two millions of dollars.
I often think that men don’t understand what is noble and what is ignorant, though they always talk about it.
Humanity has unquestionably one really effective weapon
But you must pay for conformity. All goes well as long as you run with conformists. But you, who are honest men in other particulars, know, that there is alive somewhere a man whose honesty reaches to this point also, that he shall not kneel to false gods, and, on the day when you meet him, you sink into the class of counterfeits.
There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know we don’t know.
