Go ahead and do the impossible. It's worth the look on the faces of those who said you couldn't.

An element of exaggeration clings to the popular judgment: great vices are made greater, great virtues greater also; interesting incidents are made more interesting, softer legends more soft.

Poverty is an anomaly to rich people; it is very difficult to make out why people who want dinner do not ring the bell.

Writers like teeth are divided into incisors and grinders.

One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea.

Royalty is a government in which the attention of the nation is concentrated on one person doing interesting actions. A Republic is a government in which that attention is divided between many, who are all doing uninteresting actions. Accordingly, so long as the human heart is strong and the human reason weak, Royalty will be strong because it appeals to diffused feeling, and Republics weak because they appeal to the understanding.

History is strewn with the wrecks of nations which have gained a little progressiveness at the cost of a great deal of hard manliness, and have thus prepared themselves for destruction as soon as the movements of the world have a chance for it.