If there is anything that links the human to the divine, it is the courage to stand by a principle when everybody else rejects it.

Any society that takes away from those most capable and gives to the least will perish.

We cannot escape history.

One's only security in life comes from doing something uncommonly well.

How many times have I laughed at you telling me plainly that I was too lazy to be anything but a lawyer.

Don't worry when you are not recognized, but strive to be worthy of recognition.

So plain that no one, high or low, ever does mistake it, except in a plainly selfish way; for although volume upon volume is written to prove slavery a very good thing, we never hear of the man who wishes to take the good of it, by being a slave himself.