Life is a compromise of what your ego wants to do, what experience tells you to do, and what your nerves let you do.

A great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.

In my youth I hoped to do great things; now I shall be satisfied to get through without scandal.

Our law very often reminds one of those outskirts of cities where you cannot for a long time tell how the streets come to wind about in so capricious and serpent-like a manner. At last it strikes you that they grew up, house by house, on the devious tracks of the old green lanes; and if you follow on to the existing fields, you may often find the change half complete.

Public opinion is a permeating influence, and it exacts obedience to itself; it requires us to drink other men's thoughts, to speak other men's words, to follow other men's habits.

Men who do not make advances to women are apt to become victims to women who make advances to them.

The peculiar essence of our banking system is an unprecedented trust between man and man. And when that trust is much weakened by hidden causes, a small accident may greatly hurt it, and a great accident for a moment may almost destroy it.