No man lives without jostling and being jostled; in all ways he has to elbow himself through the world, giving and receiving offence.

Great men are the commissioned guides of mankind, who rule their fellows because they are wiser.

Let him who gropes painfully in darkness or uncertain light, and prays vehemently that the dawn may ripen into day, lay this precept well to heart: "Do the duty which lies nearest to thee," which thou know to be a duty! Thy second duty will already have become clearer.

Fancy that thou deservest to be hangedthou wilt feel it happiness to be only shot: fancy that thou deservest to be hanged ina hair halter, it will be a luxury to die in hemp.

When the oak is felled the whole forest echoes with it fall, but a hundred acorns are sown in silence by an unnoticed breeze.

Sarcasm I now see to be, in general, the language of the devil; for which reason I have long since as good as renounced it.

History is a mighty dramos, enacted upon the theatre of times, with suns for lamps and eternity for a background.