The most common-place people become highly imaginative when they are in a passion. Whole dramas of insult, injury, and wrong pass before their minds,--efforts of creative genius, for there is sometimes not a fact to go upon.

People resemble still more the time in which they live, than they resemble their fathers.

Infinite toil would not enable you to sweep away a mist; but by ascending a little you may often look over it altogether.

Offended vanity is the great separator in social life.

We are not so easily guided by our most prominent weaknesses as by those of which we are least aware.

It takes a great man to make a great listener

The heroic example of other days is in great part the source of the courage of each generation; and men walk up composedly to the most perilous enterprises, beckoned onward by the shades of the brave that were.