Love is an alchemist that can transmute poison into food--and a spaniel, that prefers even punishment from one hand to caresses from another. But it is in love as in war, we are often more indebted for our success to the weakness of the defence than to the energy of the attack; for mere idleness has ruined more women than passion; vanity more than idleness, and credulity more than either.

The wisest man may be wiser to-day than he was yesterday, and to-morrow than he is to-day. Total freedom from change would imply total freedom from error; but this is the prerogative of Omniscience alone.

Of all the faculties of the mind, memory is the first that flourishes, and the first that dies.

With the offspring of genius, the law of parturition is reversed; the throes are in the conception, the pleasure in the birth.

Light, whether it be material or moral, is the best reformer.

The policy that can strike only while the iron is hot will be overcome by that perseverance, which ... can make that iron hot by striking and he that can only rule the storm must yield to him who can both raise and rule it.

With books, as with companions, it is of more consequence to know which to avoid, than which to choose; for good books are as scarce as good companions...