Virtue hath no virtue if it be not impugned; then appeareth how great it is, of what value and power it is, when by patience it approveth what it works.

Many men would have arrived at wisdom had they not believed themselves to have arrived there already.

You cannot escape necessities, but you can overcome them.

We learn not for life but for the debating-room.

No evil is without its compensation. The less money, the less trouble; the less favor, the less envy. Even in those cases which put us out of wits, it is not the loss itself, but the estimate of the loss that troubles us.

It is not that we have so little time but that we lose so much. ... The life we receive is not short but we make it so; we are not ill provided but use what we have wastefully.

Everything is the product of one universal creative effort. There is nothing dead in Nature.