Biography is the most universally pleasant and profitable of all reading.

The thing is not only to avoid error, but to attain immense masses of truth.

Generations are as the days of toilsome mankind; death and birth are the vesper and the matin bells that summon mankind to sleep and to rise refreshed for new advancement. What the father has made, the son can make and enjoy; but has also work of his own appointed him. Thus all things wax and roll onwards: arts, establishments, opinions, nothing is ever completed, but ever completing.

Why tell me that a man is a fine speaker, if it is not the truth that he is speaking?

Who is it that loves me and will love me forever with an affection which no chance, no misery, no crime of mine can do away? It is you, my mother.

A force as of madness in the hands of reason has done all that was ever done in the world.

In idleness there is a perpetual despair.