None are completely wretched but those who are without hope, and few are reduced so low as that.
All that men really understand is confined to a very small compass; to their daily affairs and experience; to what they have an opportunity to know; and motives to study or practise. The rest is affectation and imposture.
To get others to come into our ways of thinking, we must go over to theirs; and it is necessary to follow, in order to lead.
As is our confidence, so is our capacity.
The more we do, the more we can do; the more busy we are, the more leisure we have.
We had as lief not be, as not be ourselves.
The most silent people are generally those who think most highly of themselves.
Simplicity of character is the natural result of profound thought.
Horus non numero nisi serenas (I count only the sunny hours).
One truth discovered, one pang of regret at not being able to express it, is better than all the fluency and flippancy in the world.
Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are, and what they ought to be.
Shall I faint, now that I have poured out the spirit of my mind to the world, and treated many subjects with truth, with freedom, with power, because I have been followed with one cry of abuse ever since for not being a Government tool?
It should seem as if there were a few green sunny spots in the desert of life, to which we are always hastening forward: we eye them wistfully in the distance, and care not what perils or suffering we endure, so that we arrive at them at last.
The only impeccable writers are those who never wrote.
Infinite are the mortifications of the bare attempt to emerge from obscurity; numberless the failures; and greater and more galling still the vicissitudes and tormenting accompaniments of success.
Reading is perhaps the greatest pleasure you will have in life; the one you will think of longest, and repent of least.
Almost every sect of Christianity is a perversion of its essence, to accommodate it to the prejudices of the world.
Though familiarity may not breed contempt, it takes off the edge of admiration.
Look up, laugh loud, talk big, keep the color in your cheek and the fire in your eye, adorn your person, maintain your health, your beauty and your animal spirits.
There is no one thoroughly despicable. We cannot descend much lower than an idiot; and an idiot has some advantages over a wise man.
