Any society which is not improving is deteriorating, and the more so the closer and more familiar it is. Even a really superior man almost always begins to deteriorate when he is habitually king of his company.

To understand one woman is not necessarily to understand any other woman.

Ask yourself whether you are happy and you cease to be so. The only chance is to treat not happiness, but some end external to it, as the purpose of life.

The spirit of improvement is not always a spirit of liberty, for it may aim at forcing improvements on an unwilling people.

It is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day's toil of any human being.

Not only the grounds of the opinion are forgotten in the absence of discussion, but too often the meaning of the opinion itself... Instead of a vivid conception and a living belief, there remain only a few phrases retained by rote; or, if any part, the shell and husk only of the meaning is retained, the finer essence being lost.

Eloquence is heard; poetry is overheard ... All poetry is of the nature of the soliloquy.