Circumstance does not make the man. Circumstance reveals man to himself.

Good manners are made up of petty sacrifices.

Why needs a man be rich? Why must he have horses, fine garments, handsome apartments, access to public houses, and places of amusement? Only for want of thought.

A third felicity of age is that it has found expression. The youth suffers not only from ungratified desires, but from powers untried, and from a picture in his mind of a career which has as yet no outward reality. He is tormented with the want of correspondence between things and thoughts.

The manly part is to do with might and main what you can do.

The wise know that foolish legislation is a rope of sand, which perishes in the twisting.

Let us be silent — so we may hear the whisper of the gods.