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.

Subtract from many modern poets all that may be found in Shakespeare, and trash will remain.

We often pretend to fear what we really despise, and more often despise what we really fear.

That writer does the most who gives his reader the most knowledge and takes from him the least time.

For what are the triumphs of war, planned by ambition, executed by violence, and consummated by devastation? The means are the sacrifice of many, the end, the bloated aggrandizement of the few.

If you cannot inspire a woman with love of you, fill her above the brim with love of herself; all that runs over will be yours.

He that studies books alone, will know how things ought to be; and he that studies men, will know how things are.