If men would avoid that general language and general manner in which they strive to hide all that is peculiar, and would say only what was uppermost in their own minds, after their own individual manner, every man would be interesting.

Self-command is the main elegance.

Though love repine, and reason chafe, There came a voice without reply,- "'Tis man's perdition to be safe, When for the truth he ought to die."

There are many virtues in books, but the essential value is the adding of knowledge to our stock by the record of new facts, and, better, by the record of intuitions which distribute facts, and are the formulas which supersede all histories.

Tobacco, coffee, alcohol, hashish, prussic acid, strychnine, are weak dilutions. The surest poison is time.

The ancestor of every action is a thought.

Everything runs to excess; every good quality is noxious if unmixed.