There is this to be said in favor of drinking, that it takes the drunkard first out of society, then out of the world.

The wise and just man will always feel that he stands on his own feet; that he imparts strength to the state, not receives security from it; and if all went down, he and such as he would quite easily combine in a new and better constitution.

Every genuine work of art has as much reason for being as the earth and the sun.

Peace has its victories, but it takes brave men and women to win them.

Tis the good reader that makes the good book; a good head cannot read amiss: in every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from all else and unmistakeably meant for his ear.

This knot of nature is so well tied that nobody was ever cunning enough to find the two ends.

All successful men have agreed in one thing -- they were causationists. They believed that things went not by luck, but by law; that there was not a weak or a cracked link in the chain that joins the first and last of things.