Republics, one after another . . . have perished from a want of intelligence and virtue in the masses of the people. . . .

You may as well borrow a person's money as his time.

Let us not be content to wait and see what will happen, but give us the determination to make the right things happen.

Give me a house furnished with books rather than furniture! Both, if you can, but books at any rate!

On entering this world our starting-point is ignorance. None, however, but idiots remain there.

He who cannot resist temptation is not a man. Whoever yields to temptation debases himself with a debasement from which he can never arise.

We must be purposely kind and generous or we miss the best part of life's existence.