No amount of ability is of the slightest avail without honor.

Books are a triviality. Life alone is great.

Foolish men imagine that because judgment for an evil thing is delayed, there is no justice; but only accident here below. Judgment for an evil thing is many times delayed some day or two, some century or two, but it is sure as life, it is sure as death.

Experience is the best of school masters, only the school fees are heavy.

There is no heroic poem in the world but is at bottom a biography, the life of a man.

O thou who art able to write a book which once in the two centuries or oftener there is a man gifted to do, envy not him whom they name city-builder, and inexpressibly pity him whom they name conqueror or city-burner.

Woe to him that claims obedience when it is not due; woe to him that refuses it when it is.