Atheism is a disease of the soul before it becomes an error of understanding.

More will be accomplished, and better, and with more ease, if every man does what he is best fitted to do, and nothing else.

Nothing in the affairs of men is worthy of great anxiety.

That politician who curries favor with the citizens and indulges them and fawns upon them and has a presentiment of their wishes, and is skillful in gratifying them, he is esteemed a great statesman.

Where it is a general rule that it is wrong to gratify lovers, this can be attributed to the defects of those who make that rule: the government's lust for rule and the subjects' cowardice.

Aspiring minds must sometimes sustain loss.

For the man who makes everything that leads to happiness, or near to it, to depend upon himself, and not upon other men, on whose good or evil actions his own doings are compelled to hinge,--such a one, I say, has adopted the very best plan for living happily. This is the man of moderation; this is the man of manly character and of wisdom.