Next to doing things that deserve to be written, nothing gets a man more credit, or gives him more pleasure than to write things that deserve to be read.

Knowledge may give weight, but accomplishments give luster, and many more people see than weigh.

Six, or at most seven, hours' sleep is, for a constancy, as much as you or anybody else can want; more is only laziness and dozing, and is, I am persuaded, both unwholesome and stupefying.

At any age we must cherish illusions, consolatory or merely pleasant; in youth, they are omnipresent; in old age we must search for them, or even invent them. But with all that, boredom is their natural and inevitable accompaniment.

Civility, which is a disposition to accommodate and oblige others, is essentially the same in every country; but good breeding, asit is called, which is the manner of exerting that disposition, is different in almost every country, and merely local; and every man of sense imitates and conforms to that local good breeding of the place which he is at.

History is but a confused heap of facts.

In business be as able as you can, but do not be cunning; cunning is the dark sanctuary of incapacity.