It is mediocrity which makes laws and sets mantraps and spring-guns in the realm of free song, saying thus far shalt thou go and no further.

There is no better ballast for keeping the mind steady on its keel, and saving it from all risk of crankiness, than business.

At the devil's booth are all things sold. Each ounce of dross costs its ounce of gold.

Be NOBLE! and the nobleness that liesIn other men, sleeping, but never dead,Will rise in majesty to meet thine own.

Where one person shapes their life by precept and example, there are a thousand who have shaped it by impulse and circumstances.

Life is constantly weighing us in very sensitive scales, and telling every one of us precisely what his real weight is to the last grain of dust.

He mastered whatever was not worth the knowing.