The surest poison is time.
Better be a nettle in the side of your friend than his echo.
In the morning a man walks with his whole body; in the evening, only with his legs.
That man is idle who can do something better.
Great geniuses have the shortest biographies.
Words are finite organs of the infinite mind. They cannot cover the dimensions of what is in truth. They break, chop, and impoverish it.
The best effort of a fine person is felt after we have left their presence.
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.
Passion is a sort of fever in the mind, which ever leaves us weaker than it found us.
A man sits as many risks as he runs.
A woman is a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke.
The desire of advising has a very extensive prevalence; and, since advice cannot be given but to those that will hear it, a patient listener is necessary to the accommodation of all those who desire to be confirmed in the opinion of their own wisdom: a patient listener, however, is not always to be had; the present age, whatever age is present, is so vitiated and disordered, that young people are readier to talk than to attend, and good counsel is only thrown away upon those who are full of their own perfections.
I expect to pass through life but once. If therefore there be any kindness I can show…let me do it now.- William Penn
Croesus said to Cambyses; That peace was better than war; because in peace the sons did bury their fathers, but in wars the fathers did bury their sons.
Whether you come from a council estate or a country estate, your success will be determined by your own confidence and fortitude.
Ignorant people think it is the noise which fighting cats make that is so aggravating, but it ain’t so; it is the sickening grammar that they use.
Arguments of convenience lack integrity and inevitably trip you up.
He who has made it a practice to lie and deceive his father, will be the most daring in deceiving others.
It is long ere we discover how rich we are. Our history, we are sure, is quite tame: we have nothing to write, nothing to infer. But our wiser years still run back to the despised recollections of childhood, and always we are fishing up some wonderful article out of that pond; until, by and by, we begin to suspect that the biography of the one foolish person we know is, in reality, nothing less than the miniature paraphrase of the hundred volumes of the Universal History.
All the sweetness of religion is conveyed to the world by the hands of story-tellers and image-makers. Without their fictions the truths of religion would for the multitude be neither intelligible nor even apprehensible; and the prophets would prophesy and the teachers teach in vain.
Thought is the blossom; language the bud; action the fruit behind it.
Your manuscript is both good and original; but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good.
