Yet happiness isn't something you chase, it's something you are. It's something you think, it's something you believe.

He that easily believes rumors has the principle within him to augment rumors. It is strange to see the ravenous appetite with which some devourers of character and happiness fix upon the sides of the innocent and unfortunate.

Any base heart can devise means of vileness, and affix the ugly shapings of its own fancy to the actions of those around him; but it requires loftiness of mind, and the heaven-born spirit of virtue, to imagine greatness where it is not, and to deck the sordid objects of nature in the beautiful robes of loveliness and light.

Imparting knowledge is only lighting other men's candles at our lamp without depriving ourselves of any flame.

Guilt is a spiritual Rubicon.

There is nothing so clear-sighted and sensible as a noble mind in a low estate.

However you disguise slavery, it is slavery still. Its chains, though wreathed with roses, not only fasten on the body but rivet on the mind.