The only compensation which war offers for its manifold mischiefs, is in the great personal qualities to which it gives scope and occasion.

Genius always finds itself a century too early.

It is always so pleasant to be generous, though very vexatious to pay debts.

Concentration is the secret of strength in politics, in war, in trade, in short in all management of human affairs.

Those who have ruled human destinies, like planets, for thousands of years, were not handsome men.

The etymologist finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant picture. Language is fossil poetry. As the limestone of the continent consists of infinite masses of the shells of animalcules, so language is made up of images or tropes, which now, in their secondary use, have long ceased to remind us of their poetic origin.

Let the realist not mind appearances. Let him delegate to others the costly courtesies and decorations of social life. The virtuesare economists, but some of the vices are also. Thus, next to humility, I have noticed that pride is a pretty good husband. A good pride is, as I reckon it, worth from five hundred to fifteen hundred a year.