It is good to be without vices, but it is not good to be without temptations.

You may talk of the tyranny of Nero and Tiberius; but the real tyranny is the tyranny of your next-door neighbor.

The real essence of work is concentrated energy - people who really have that in a superior degree by nature are independent of the forms and habits and artifices by which less able and less active people are kept up to their labors.

Credit means that a certain confidence is given, and a certain trust reposed. Is that trust justified? And is that confidence wise? These are the cardinal questions. To put it more simply credit is a set of promises to pay; will those promises be kept?

Women--one half the human race at least--care fifty times more for a marriage than a ministry.

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

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