If you have known how to compose your life, you have done a great deal more than the person who knows how to compose a book. You have done more than the one who has taken cities and empires.

We must not attach knowledge to the mind, we have to incorporate it there.

I speak the truth, not my fill of it, but as much as I dare speak; and I dare to do so a little more as I grow old.

Learning is not to be tacked to the mind, but we must fuse and blend them together, not merely giving the mind a slight tincture, but a thorough and perfect dye. And if we perceive no evident change and improvement, it would be better to leave it alone; learning is a dangerous weapon, and apt to wound its master if it be wielded by a feeble hand, and by one not well acquainted with its use.

Oh, what a valiant faculty is hope.

A father is very miserable who has no other hold on his children's affection than the need they have of his assistance, if that can be called affection.

Life in itself is neither good nor evil, it is the place of good and evil, according to what you make it.