No face which we can give to a matter will stead us so well at last as the truth. This alone wears well.

How long shall we sit in our porticoes practising idle and musty virtues, which any work would make impertinent? As if one were tobegin the day with long-suffering, and hire a man to hoe his potatoes; and in the afternoon go forth to practise Christian meekness and charity with goodness aforethought!

No man ever followed his genius till it misled him.

We make needless ado about capital punishment,--taking lives, when there is no life to take.

If we were always, indeed, getting our living, and regulating our lives according to the last and best mode we had learned, we should never be troubled with ennui.

I am not afraid that I shall exaggerate the value and significance of life, but that I shall not be up to the occasion which it is.

Great men, unknown to their generation, have their fame among the great who have preceded them, and all true worldly fame subsides from their high estimate beyond the stars.