I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.
Only that day dawns to which we are awake.
What is morality but immemorial custom? Conscience is the chief of conservatives.
Philanthropy is. . . greatly overrated. A pain in the gut is not sympathy for the underprivileged, but the result of eating a green apple; the philanthropist gives to ease his own pain.
Is there not a sort of blood shed when the conscience is wounded? Through this wound a man's real manhood and immortality flow out, and he bleeds to an everlasting death
The greatest art is to shape the quality of the day.
What does education often do? It makes a straight-cut ditch of a free, meandering brook.
Ignorance and bungling with love are better than wisdom and skill without.
Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.
There is no value in life except what you choose to place upon it and no happiness in any place except what you bring to it yourself.
If the machine of government is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law.
The true price of anything you do is the amount of time you exchange for it.
If there is any hell more unprincipled than our rulers, and we, the ruled, I feel curious to see it.
I did not know that mankind were suffering for want of gold. I have seen a little of it. I know that it is very malleable, but not so malleable as wit. A grain of gold will gild a great surface, but n...
I have received no more than one or two letters in my life that were worth the postage.
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.
We are more of the earth,Farther from heaven these days.
Make the most of your regrets never smother your sorrow, but tend and cherish it till it comes to have a separate and integral interest. To regret deeply is to live afresh.
Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.
Live your life, do your work, then take your hat.