A vow is a snare for sin.
Turn on the prudent ant thy heedful eyes. Observe her labors, sluggard, and be wise.
At seventy-seven it is time to be in earnest.
We are long before we are convinced that happiness is never to be found; and each believes it possessed by others, to keep alive the hope of obtaining it for himself.
Parents and children seldom act in concert: each child endeavors to appropriate the esteem or fondness of the parents, and the parents, with yet less temptation, betray each other to their children.
The return of my birthday, if I remember it, fills me with thoughts which it seems to be the general care of humanity to escape.
A man ought to read just as inclination leads him, for what he reads as a task will do him little good.
A crank is someone with a new idea – until it catches on.
When you know to laugh and when to look upon things as too absurd to take seriously, the other person is ashamed to carry through even if he was serious about it.
Tyrants have always some slight shade of virtue; they support the laws before destroying them.
There is no wisdom in useless and hopeless sorrow, but there is something in it so like virtue, that he who is wholly without it cannot be loved.
We feel at first as if some opportunities of kindness and sympathy were lost, but learn afterward that any pure grief is ample recompense for all. That is, if we are faithful; for a spent grief is but sympathy with the soul that disposes events, and is as natural as the resin of Arabian trees. Only nature has a right to grieve perpetually, for she only is innocent. Soon the ice will melt, and the blackbirds sing along the river which he frequented, as pleasantly as ever. The same everlasting serenity will appear in this face of God, and we will not be sorrowful, if he is not.
For the most important decisions in your life, trust your intuition, and then work with everything you have, to prove it right.
Obscurity and competence: That is the life that is worth living.
Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents, which in prosperous circumstances would have lain dormant.
We estimate the wisdom of nations by seeing what they did with their surplus capital.
Do not try to live forever. You will not succeed.
Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be.
As there is a use in medicine for poisons, so the world cannot move without rogues.
Though analogy is often misleading, it is the least misleading thing we have.
If a man’s wit be wandering, let him study the mathematics.
It is better to risk saving a guilty person than to condemn an innocent one.
