The first requisite of style, not only in rhetoric, but in all compositions, is perspicuity.

As the telescope is not a substitute for, but an aid to, our sight, so revelation is not designed to supersede the use of reason, but to supply its deficiencies.

It is folly to shiver over last year's snow.

The first requisite of style, not only in rhetoric, but in all compositions, is perspicuity.

When any person of really eminent virtue becomes the object of envy, the clamor and abuse by which he is assailed is but the sign and accompaniment of his success in doing service to the public. And if he is a truly wise man, he will take no more notice of it than the moon does of the howling of the dogs. Her only answer to them is to shine on.

Great affectation and great absence of it are at first sight very similar.

It is folly to expect men to do all that they may reasonably be expected to do.