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

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.

We would willingly, and without remorse, sacrifice not only the present moment, but all the interval (no matter how long) that separates us from any favorite object.

Books are a world in themselves, it is true; but they are not the only world. The world itself is a volume larger than all the libraries in it.

We never do anything well till we cease to think about the manner of doing it.

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.

There are many who talk on from ignorance rather than from knowledge, and who find the former an inexhaustible fund of conversation.