Reality is a sliding door.
Books are the best of things if well used; if abused, among the worst. They are good for nothing but to inspire. I had better never see a book than be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and made a satellite instead of a system.
The good lawyer is not the man who has an eye to every side and angle of contingency, and qualifies all his qualifications, but who throws himself on your part so heartily, that he can get you out of a scrape.
The virtue in most request is conformity.
The revelation of Thought takes men out of servitude into freedom.
Nothing is beneath you if it is in the direction of your life.
The greatest gift is a portion of thyself.
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.
Behave so the aroma of your actions may enhance the general sweetness of the atmosphere.
Let us, if we must have great actions, make our own so. All action is of infinite elasticity, and the least admits of being inflated with celestial air, until it eclipses the sun and moon.
At the bottom of all the tributes paid to democracy is the little man walking into the little booth with a little pencil, making a little cross on a little bit of paper. No amount of rhetoric or voluminous discussion can possibly diminish the overwhelming importance of that point.
The studious class are their own victims: they are thin and pale, their feet are cold, their heads are hot, the night is without sleep, the day a fear of interruption –pallor, squalor, hunger, and egotism.
To let friendship die away by negligence and silence is certainly not wise. It is voluntarily to throw away one of the greatest comforts of the weary pilgrimage.
You are alive, so be fully alive.
Farmers are respectable and interesting to me in proportion as they are poor.
None of us should be defined by the worst thing we’ve ever done.
Depend upon it, Sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.
Knowledge is knowing that we cannot know.
The eye is the jewel of the body.
Raise your words, not your voice. It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder.
Very few people can afford to be poor.
Whether you come from a council estate or a country estate, your success will be determined by your own confidence and fortitude.
