What is the cheapest to you now is likely to be the dearest to you in the end.

Failure is less attributable to either insufficiency of means or impatience of labours than to a confused understanding of the thing actually to be done.

Of all the pulpits from which human voice is ever sent forth, there is none from which it reaches so far as from the grave.

If the thing is impossible, you need not trouble yourselves about it; if possible, try for it.

Your honesty is not to be based either on religion or policy. Both your religion and policy must be based on it. Your honesty must be based, as the sun is, in vacant heaven; poised, as the lights in the firmament, which have rule over the day and over the night.

Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts - the book of their deeds, the book of their words and the book of their art.

The very cheapness of literature is making even wise people forget that if a book is worth reading, it is worth buying. No book is worth anything which is not worth much; nor is it serviceable, until it has been read, and re-read, and loved, and loved again; and marked, so that you can refer to the passages you want in it.