To persuade is more trouble than to dominate, and the powerful seldom take this trouble if they can avoid it.

If we divine a discrepancy between a man's words and his character, the whole impression of him becomes broken and painful; he revolts the imagination by his lack of unity, and even the good in him is hardly accepted.

A strange and somewhat impassive physiognomy is often, perhaps, an advantage to an orator, or leader of any sort, because it helps to fix the eye and fascinate the mind.

It is surely a matter of common observation that a man who knows no one thing intimately has no views worth hearing on things in general. The farmer philosophizes in terms of crops, soils, markets, and implements, the mechanic generalizes his experiences of wood and iron, the seaman reaches similar conclusions by his own special road; and if the scholar keeps pace with these it must be by an equally virile productivity.

A cat cares for you only as a source of food, security and a place in the sun.

The idea that seeing life means going from place to place and doing a great variety of obvious things is an illusion natural to dull minds.

The need to exert power, when thwarted in the open fields of life, is the more likely to assert itself in trifles.