One must pray first, but afterwards one must help oneself. God does not care for cowards.

It is a kind of blindness--poverty. We can only grope through life when we are poor, hitting and maiming ourselves against every angle.

It is hard work to be good when you are very little and very hungry, and have many sticks to beat you, and no mother's lips to kiss you.

To vice, innocence must always seem only a superior kind of chicanery.

No great talker ever did any great thing yet, in this world.

A just chastisement may benefit a man, though it seldom does; but an unjust one changes all his blood to gall.

The fire of true enthusiasm is like the fires of Baku, which no water can ever quench, and which burn steadily on from night to day, and year to year, because their well-spring is eternal.