The happy never say, and never hear said, farewell.

If in argument we can make a man angry with us, we have drawn him from his vantage ground and overcome him.

It has been my fortune to love in general those men most who have thought most differently from me, on subjects wherein others pardon no discordance. I think I have no more right to be angry with a man, whose reason has followed up a process different from what mine has, and is satisfied with the result, than with one who has gone to Venice while I am at Siena, and who writes to me that he likes the place.

Consciousness of error is, to a certain extent, a consciousness of understanding; and correction of error is the plainest proof of energy and mastery.

Great men too often have greater faults than little men can find room for.

I sometimes think that the most plaintive ditty has brought a fuller joy and of longer duration to its composer that the conquest of Persia to the Macedonian.

We cannot conquer fate and necessity, yet we can yield to them in such a manner as to be greater than if we could.