My thoughts will be taken up with the future or the past, with what is to come or what has been. Of the present there is necessarily no image.

Books are the depositary of everything that is most honourable to man.

No man must encroach upon my province, nor I upon his. He may advise me, moderately and without pertinaciousness, but he must not expect to dictate to me. He may censure me freely and without reserve; but he should remember that I am to act by my deliberation and not his. I ought to exercise my talents for the benefit of others; but that exercise must be the fruit of my own conviction; no man must attempt to press me into the service.

No maxim can be more pernicious than that which would teach us to consult the temper of the times, and to tell only so much as we imagine our contemporaries will be able to bear.

Power is not happiness.

The philosophy of the wisest man that ever existed, is mainly derived from the act of introspection.

Let us not, in the eagerness of our haste to educate, forget all the ends of education.