It requires a great deal of boldness and a great deal of caution to make a great fortune, and when you have it, it requires ten times as much skill to keep it.

When fear enters the heart of a man at hearing the names of candidates and the reading of laws that are proposed, then is the State safe, but when these things are heard without regard, as above or below us, then is the Commonwealth sick or dead.

Whilst the rights of all as persons are equal, in virtue of their access to reason, their rights in property are very unequal. Oneman owns his clothes, and another owns a country.

Evil is merely privative, not absolute: it is like cold, which is the privation of beat.

How we hate this solemn Ego that accompanies the learned, like a double, wherever he goes.

Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.

Be sure then to read no mean books. Shun the spawn of the press on the gossip of the hour. Do not read what you shall learn, without asking, in the street and the train.