Unlike the sun, intellectual luminaries shine brightest after they set.

True friendship is like sound health; the value of it is seldom known until it is lost.

Few things are more agreeable to self-love than revenge, and yet no cause so effectually restrains us from revenge as self-love. And this paradox naturally suggests another; that the strength of the community is not unfrequently built upon the weakness of those individuals that compose it.

If the prodigal quits life in debt to others, the miser quits it still deeper in debt to himself.

Nothing more completely baffles one who is full of trick and duplicity himself, than straight forward and simple integrity in another.

The road to glory would cease to be arduous if it were trite and trodden; and great minds must be ready not only to take opportunities but to make them.

It is adverse to talent to be consorted and trained up with inferior minds and inferior companions, however high they may rank. The foal of the racer neither finds out his speed nor calls out his powers if pastured out with the common herd, that are destined for the collar and the yoke.