I would fain keep sober always; and there are infinite degrees of drunkenness.

I have now a library of nearly nine hundred volumes, over seven hundred of which I wrote myself.

The wonderful purity of nature at this season is a most pleasing fact.... In the bare fields and tinkling woods, see what virtue survives. In the coldest and bleakest places, the warmest charities still maintain a foothold.

When we are unhurried and wise, we perceive that only great and worthy things have any permanent and absolute existence, that petty fears and petty pleasures are but the shadow of the reality.

Faint heart never won true friend. O my friend, may it come to pass, once, that when you are my friend I may be yours.

Truth never turns to rebuke falsehood; her own straightforwardness is the severest correction.

All questions rely on the present for their solution. Time measures nothing but itself. The word that is written may be postponed,but not that on the lip. If this is what the occasion says, let the occasion say it.