Every violation of truth is not only a sort of suicide in the liar, but is a stab at the health of human society.

A great man will find a great subject, or which is the same thing, make any subject great.

Let there be worse cotton and better men.

Always maintain your common sense and artful skills, and funnel it all into plain enough dealings.

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.

Our debt to tradition through reading and conversation is so massive, our protest so rare and insignificant-and this commonly on the ground of other reading and hearing-that in large sense, one would say there is no pure originality. All minds quote. Old and new make the warp and woof of every moment. There is no thread that is not a twist of these two strands. By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote. It is as difficult to appropriate the thoughts of others as it is to invent.

All promise outruns performance.