One truth discovered, one pang of regret at not being able to express it, is better than all the fluency and flippancy in the world.

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.

Genius is native to the soil where it grows — is fed by the air, and warmed by the sun — and is not a hot - house plant or an exotic.

Our friends are generally ready to do everything for us, except the very thing we wish them to do.

Words are the only things that last for ever.

Of all eloquence a nickname is the most concise; of all arguments the most unanswerable.

I like a person who knows his own mind and sticks to it; who sees at once what is to be done in given circumstances and does it. He does not beat about the bush for difficulties or excuses, but goes the shortest and most effectual way to work to attain his own ends, or to accomplish a useful object.