Words indeed are but the signs and counters of knowledge, and their currency should be strictly regulated by the capital which they represent.

Grant graciously what you cannot refuse safely and conciliate those you cannot conquer.

Extemporaneous and oral harangues will always have this advantage over those that are read from a in manuscript: every burst of eloquence or spark of genius they may contain, however studied they may have been beforehand, will appear to the audience to be the effect of the sudden inspiration of talent.

A harmless hilarity and a buoyant cheerfulness are not infrequent concomitants of genius; and we are never more deceived than when we mistake gravity for greatness, solemnity for science, and pomposity for erudition.

Doubt is the vestibule of faith.

For all the practical purposes of life, truth might as well be in a prison as in the folio of a schoolman; and those who release her from her cobwebbed shelf and teach her to live with men have the merit of liberating, if not of discovering, her.

That author, however, who has thought more than he has read, read more than he has written, and written more than he has published, if he does not command success, has at least deserved it.