Patience is the support of weakness; impatience the ruin of strength.

Mystery is not profoundness.

Posthumous fame is a plant of tardy growth, for our body must be the seed of it; or we may liken it to a torch, which nothing but the last spark of life can light up; or we may compare it to the trumpet of the archangel, for it is blown over the dead; but unlike that awful blast, it is of earth, not of heaven, and can neither rouse nor raise us.

Time ... advances like the slowest tide, but retreats like the swiftest torrent.

There are some men who are fortune's favorites, and who, like cats, light forever on their legs.

The worst thing that can be said of the most powerful is that they can take your life; but the same can be said of the most weak.

Despotism can no more exist in a nation until the liberty of the press be destroyed than the night can happen before the sun is set.