If your determination is fixed, I do not counsel you to despair. Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance.
When an author is yet living we estimate his powers by his worst performance and when he is dead we rate them by his best.
Read over your compositions and when you meet a passage which you think is particularly fine strike it out.
If a madman were to come into this room with a stick in his hand no doubt we should pity the state of his mind but our primary consideration would be to take care of ourselves. We should knock him d...
To be of no Church is dangerous.
It is common to overlook what is near by keeping the eye fixed on something remote.
Present opportunities are neglected and attainable good is slighted by minds busied in extensive ranges and intent upon future advantages.
Were it not for imagination a man would be as happy in the arms of a chambermaid as of a duchess.
Friendship peculiar boon of Heaven The noble mind's delight and pride To men and angels only given To all the lower world denied.
Friendship is seldom lasting but between equals or where the superiority on one side is reduced by some equivalent advantage on the other.
A tavern chair is the throne of human felicity.
Curiosity is one of the permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect.
That is the happiest conversation where there is no competition no vanity but a calm quiet interchange of sentiments.
Promise large promise is the soul of an advertisement.
Those who do not feel pain seldom think that it is felt.
There is nothing so minute or inconsiderable that I would not rather know it than not know it.
The only end of writing is to enable readers better to enjoy life or better to endure it.
In order that all men may be taught to speak the truth, it is necessary that all likewise should learn to hear it.
The greatest part of a writer's time is spent in reading in order to write. A man will turn over half a library to make a book.
Life affords no higher pleasure than that of surmounting difficulties, passing from one step of success to another, forming new wishes and seeing them gratified.