There are only three pleasures in life pure and lasting, and all derived from inanimate things-books, pictures and the face of nature.

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

Those people who are always improving never become great. Greatness is an eminence, the ascent to which is steep and lofty, and which a man must seize on at once by natural boldness and vigor, and not by patient, wary steps.

The difference between the vanity of a Frenchman and an Englishman seems to be this: the one thinks everything right that is French, the other thinks everything wrong that is not English.

It may be made a question whether men grow wiser as they grow older, anymore than they grow stronger or healthier or honest.

I like a person who knows his own mind and sticks to it; who sees at once what, in given circumstances, is to be done, and does it.

To display the greatest powers, unless they are applied to great purposes, makes nothing for the character of greatness.