The love of fame is almost another name for the love of excellence; or it is the ambition to attain the highest excellence, sanctioned by the highest authority, that of time.

As we are poetical in our natures, so we delight in fable.

It is easier taking the beaten path than making our way over bogs and precipices. The great difficulty in philosophy is to come to every question with a mind fresh and unshackled by former theories, though strengthened by exercise and information.

Habitual liars invent falsehoods not to gain any end or even to deceive their hearers, but to amuse themselves. It is partly practice and partly habit. It requires an effort in them to speak truth.

Talent is the capacity of doing anything that depends on application and industry and it is a voluntary power, while genius is involuntary.

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.

The more we do, the more we can do.