Fate laughs at probabilities.

Tell me, sweet eyes, from what divinest star did ye drink in your liquid melancholy?

Emotion, whether of ridicule, anger, or sorrow,--whether raised at a puppet show, a funeral, or a battle,--is your grandest of levellers. The man who would be always superior should be always apathetic.

Common sense is only a modification of talent. Genius is an exaltation of it. The difference is, therefore, in degree, not nature.

What men want is not talent, it is purpose; in other words, not the power to achieve, but the will to labor.

Love like Death,, Levels all ranks, and lays the shepherd's crook Beside the scepter

Every man of sound brain whom you meet knows something worth knowing better than yourself. A man, on the whole, is a better preceptor than a book. But what scholar does not allow that the dullest book can suggest to him a new and a sound idea?