In every phenomenon the beginning remains always the most notable moment.

The work an unknown good man has done is like a vein of water flowing hidden underground, secretly making the ground green.

A man ought to inquire and find out what he really and truly has an appetite for; what suits his constitution; and that, doctors tell him, is the very thing he ought to have in general. And so with books.

Men are to be guided only by their self-interests. Good government is a good balancing of these; and, except a keen eye and appetite for self-interest, requires no virtue in any quarter. To both parties it is emphatically a machine: to the discontented, a taxing-machine; to the contented, a machine for securing property. Its duties and its faults are not those of a father, but of an active parish-constable.

Leaders: Captains of industry.

Men's hearts ought not to be set against one another, but set with one another and all against evil only.

Habit and imitation--there is nothing more perennial in us than these two. They are the source of all working, and all apprenticeship, of all practice, and all learning, in this world.