There is nothing more to be esteemed than a manly firmness and decision of character.

Power is pleasure; and pleasure sweetens pain.

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

An honest man speaks the truth, though it may give offence; a vain man, in order that it may.

No man is truly great who is great only in his lifetime. The test of greatness is the page of history.

The pleasure of hating, like a poisonous mineral, eats into the heart of religion, and turns it to ranking spleen and bigotry; it makes patriotism an excuse for carrying fire, pestilence, and famine into other lands: it leaves to virtue nothing but the spirit of censoriousness.

If I have not read a book before, it is, for all intents and purposes, new to me whether it was printed yesterday or three hundred years ago.