We are wiser than we know.
Men achieve a certain greatness unawares, when working to another aim.
A character is like an acrostic or Alexandrian stanza; read it forward, backward, or across, it still spells the same thing.
People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.
When I was praised I lost my time, for instantly I turned around to look at the work I had thought slightly of, and that day I made nothing new.
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.
When the eyes say one thing, and the tongue another, a practiced man relies on the language of the first.
Consequences are unpitying.
To strive with difficulties, and to conquer them, is the highest human felicity.
However intense my experience, I am conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me, which, as it were, is not a part of me, but a spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it, and that is no more I than it is you. When the play, it may be the tragedy, of life is over, the spectator goes his way. It was a kind of fiction, a work of the imagination only, so far as he was concerned.
The easy confidence with which I know another man’s religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also.
The more you know the less you understand.
A healthy body is a guest chamber for the soul: a sick body is a prison.
Humor is mankind’s greatest blessing.
I suppose you think that persons who are as old as your father and myself are always thinking about very grave things, but I know that we are meditating the same old themes that we did when we were ten years old, only we go more gravely about it.
The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.
Commerce is a game of skill which everyone cannot play and few can play well.
Try, try, try, and keep on trying is the rule that must be followed to become an expert in anything.
He who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare. While he who has one enemy will meet him everywhere.
That virtue we appreciate is as much ours as another s. We see so much only as we possess.
Life will not bear refinement. You must do as other people do.
Revolutions are always verbose.
