Lovers should guard their strangeness. If they forgive too much, all slides into confusion and meanness.

General ideas are essences. They are our gods: they round and ennoble the most partial and sordid way of living.

We are shut up in schools and college recitation rooms for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a bellyful of words and do not know a thing.

The reason why any one refuses his assent to your opinion, or his aid to your benevolent design, is in you: he refuses to accept you as a bringer of truth, because, though you think you have it, he feels that you have it not. You have not given him the authentic sign.

Doing well is the result of doing good. That's what capitalism is all about.

The less a man thinks or knows about his virtues, the better we like him.

Throughout the ages there have always been those who have been willing to go beyond the norms and reach for that unknown and distant star.