You know more of a road by having traveled it than by all the conjectures and descriptions in the world.

There is something captivating in spirit and intrepidity, to which, we often yield as to a resistless power; nor can he reasonably expect, the confidence of others who too apparently distrusts himself.

When one can do better than everyone else in the same walk, one does not make any very painful exertions to outdo oneself. The progress of improvement ceases nearly at the point where competition ends.

A Whig is properly what is called a Trimmer - that is, a coward to both sides of the question, who dare not be a knave nor an honest man, but is a sort of whiffing, shuffling, cunning, silly, contemptible, unmeaning negation of the two.

The person whose doors I enter with most pleasure, and quit with most regret, never did me the smallest favor.

People are not soured by misfortune, but by the reception they meet with in it.

The imagination is of so delicate a texture that even words wound it.