We ought not to confine ourselves either to writing or to reading; the one, continuous writing, will cast a gloom over our strength, and exhaust it; the other will make our strength flabby and watery. It is better to have recourse to them alternately, and to blend one with the other, so that the fruits of one's reading may be reduced to concrete form by the pen.

There are more people abusive to others than lie open to abuse themselves; but the humor goes round, and he that laughs at me today will have somebody to laugh at him tomorrow.

Anger is like those ruins which smash themselves on what they fall.

We suffer more in imagination than in reality.

Without an adversary prowess shrivels. We see how great and efficient it really is only when it shows by endurance what it is capable of.

Eyes will not see when the heart wishes them to be blind.

We are mad, not only individually, but nationally. We check manslaughter and isolated murders; but what of war and the much-vaunted crime of slaughtering whole peoples?