When one can do better than everyone else in the same walk, one does not make any very painful exertions to outdo oneself. The progress of improvement ceases nearly at the point where competition ends.

Refinement creates beauty everywhere. It is the grossness of the spectator that discovers anything like grossness in the object.

Perhaps the best cure for the fear of death is to reflect that life has a beginning as well as an end. There was a time when we were not: this gives us no concern. Why, then, should it trouble us that a time will come when we shall cease to be?

To think justly, we must understand what others mean. To know the value of our thoughts, we must try their effect on other minds.

If you give an audience a chance they will do half your acting for you.

It is essential to the triumph of reform that it should never succeed.

We are thankful for good-will rather than for services, for the motive than the quantum of favor received.