The one prudence in life is concentration; the one evil is dissipation: and it makes no difference whether our dissipations are coarse or fine; property and its cares, friends and a social habit, or politics, or music, or feasting. Everything is good which takes away one plaything and delusion more, and drives us home to add one stroke of faithful work.

There is no one who does not exaggerate. In conversation, men are encumbered with personality, and talk too much.

Strong men greet war, tempest, hard times. They wish, as Pindar said, to tread the floors of hell, with necessities as hard as iron.

Children and savages use only nouns or names of things, which they convert into verbs, and apply to analogous mental acts.

The whole value of the dime is in knowing what to do with it.

If you visit your friend, why need you apologize for not having visited him, and waste his time and deface your own act? Visit him now.

Mankind divides itself into two classes,--benefactors and malefactors. The second class is vast; the first a handful.