The real essence of work is concentrated energy.

Progress would not have been the rarity it is if the early food had not been the late poison.

The reason why so few good books are written is that so few people who can write know anything.

Efficiency in an assembly requires a solid mass of steady votes; and these are collected by a deferential attachment to particular men, or by a belief in the principles that those men represent, and they are maintained by fear of those men - by the fear that if you vote against them, you may soon yourself have no vote at all.

A man's mother is his misfortune, but his wife is his fault.

To a great experience one thing is essential, an experiencing nature.

The most intellectual of men are moved quite as much by the circumstances which they are used to as by their own will. The active voluntary part of a man is very small, and if it were not economized by a sleepy kind of habit, its results would be null.