Whatever is almost true is quite false, and among the most dangerous of errors, because being so near truth, it is more likely to lead astray.

Nobody ever sees truth except in fragments.

A man's character is the reality of himself; his reputation, the opinion others have formed about him; character resides in him, reputation in other people; that is the substance, this is the shadow.

I never knew an early-rising, hard-working, prudent man, careful of his earnings, and strictly honest who complained of bad luck.

If you attempt to beat a man down and to get his goods for less than a fair price, you are attempting to commit burglary, as much as though you broke into his shop to take the things without paying for them.

We know that the gifts which men have do not come from the schools. If a man is a plain, literal, factual man, you can make a great deal more of him in his own line by education than without education, just as you can make a great deal more of a potato if you cultivate it than if you do not; but no cultivation in this world will ever make an apple out of a potato.

Speak of the appetite for drink; or of a bon-vivant's relish for dinner! What are these mere animal throes and ragings compared with those fantasies of taste, of those yearning of the imagination, of those insatiable appetites of intellect, which bewilder a student in a great bookseller's temptation-hall.