Mystery is not profoundness.

The hand that unnerved Belshazzar derived its most horrifying influence from the want of a body, and death itself is not formidable in what we do know of it, but in what we do not.

Early rising not only gives us more life in the same number of years, but adds, likewise, to their number; and not only enables us to enjoy more of existence in the same time, but increases also the measure.

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

Wealth after all is a relative thing since he that has little and wants less is richer than he that has much and wants more.

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.

The highest knowledge can be nothing more than the shortest and clearest road to truth; all the rest is pretension, not performance, mere verbiage and grandiloquence, from which we can learn nothing.