Conceit may puff a man up, but never prop him up.

The common practice of keeping up appearances with society is a mere selfish struggle of the vain with the vain.

I had no companions to quarrel with, nobody to assist, and nobody to thank... the evil consequence of all this was not, however, what might perhaps have been expected, that I grew up selfish or non affectionate; but that, when affection did come, it came with a violence utterly rampant and unmanageable.

Greater completion marks the progress of art, absolute completion usually its decline.

The strength and power of a country depends absolutely on the quantity of good men and women in it.

If you want knowledge, you must toil for it; if food, you must toil for it; and if pleasure, you must toil for it: toil is the law.

What right have you to take the word wealth, which originally meant well-being, and degrade and narrow it by confining it to certain sorts of material objects measured by money.