of all the follies that we can commit, the greatest is to hesitate.

We are ourselves the stumbling-blocks in the way of our happiness. Place a common individual - by common, I mean with the common share of stupidity, custom, and discontent - place him in the garden of Eden, and he would not find it out unless he were told, and when told, he would not believe it.

in came ... a baby, eloquent as infancy usually is, and like most youthful orators, more easily heard than understood.

One of the greatest of all mental pleasures is to have our thoughts often divined: ever entered into with sympathy.

Business before pleasure.

there can be neither politically nor morally a good which is not universal ... we cannot reform for a time or for a class, but for all and for the whole, and our very interests will draw us together in one wide bond of sympathy.

No thoroughly occupied man was ever yet very miserable.