Many actions, like the Rhone, have two sources,--one pure, the other impure.

Few take advice, or physic, without wry faces at it.

If you wish a general to be beaten, send him a ream full of instructions; if you wish him to succeed, give him a destination, and bid him conquer.

The ablest writer is only a gardener first, and then a cook: his tasks are, carefully to select and cultivate his strongest and most nutritive thoughts; and when they are ripe, to dress them, wholesomely, and yet so that they may have a relish.

The praises of others may be of use in teaching us, not what we are, but what we ought to be.

A youth's love is the more passionate; virgin love is the more idolatrous.

A lawyer's brief will be brief, before a freethinker thinks freely.