To sentence a man of true genius, to the drudgery of a school is to put a racehorse on a treadmill.

Age and Aging

The excess of our youth are checks written against our age and they are payable with interest thirty years later.

Applause

Applause is the spur of noble minds, the end and aim of weak ones.

Belief

He that will believe only what he can fully comprehend must have a long head or a very short creed.

Charity

Did universal charity prevail, earth would be a heaven, and hell a fable.

Conversation

Repartee is perfect when it effects its purpose with a double edge. It is the highest order of wit, as it indicates the coolest yet quickest exercise of genius, at a moment when the passions are roused.

Death and Dying

Death is the liberator of him whom freedom cannot release, the physician of him whom medicine cannot cure, and the comforter of him whom time cannot console.

Detail

Pedantry is the showy display of knowledge which crams our heads with learned lumber and then takes out our brains to make room for it.

Fear

We often pretend to fear what we really despise, and more often despise what we really fear.

Friends and Friendship

True friendship is like sound health, the value of it is seldom known until it be lost.

Greed

Avarice has ruined more souls than extravagance.

Honor

Honor is unstable and seldom the same; for she feeds upon opinion, and is as fickle as her food.

Knowledge

We own almost all our knowledge not to those who have agreed but to those who have differed.

Love

Friendship often ends in love; but love in friendship, never.

Memory

Contemporaries appreciate the person rather than their merit, posterity will regard the merit rather than the person.

Mystery

Mystery is not profoundness.

Opportunity

Subtract from the great man all that he owes to opportunity, all that he owes to chance, and all that he gained by the wisdom of his friends and the folly of his enemies, and the giant will often be seen to be a pygmy.

Philosophers and Philosophy

Philosophy is a bully that talks loud when the danger is at a distant; but, the moment she is pressed hard by an enemy, she is nowhere to be found and leaves the brunt of the battle to be fought by her steady, humble comrade, religion.

Power

No man is wise enough, or good enough to be trusted with unlimited power.

Prudence

Men are born with two eyes, but with one tongue, in order that they should see twice as much as they say.

Results

The consequences of things are not always proportionate to the apparent magnitude of those events that have produced them. Thus the American Revolution, from which little was expected, produced much; but the French Revolution, from which much was expected, produced little.

Silence

Silence is foolish if we are wise, but wise if we are foolish.

Success

To know a man, observe how he wins his object, rather than how he loses it; for when we fail, our pride supports; when we succeed; it betrays us.

Tolerance

As no roads are so rough as those that have just been mended, so no sinners are so intolerant as those that have just turned saints.

Wealth

It is only when the rich are sick that they fully feel the impotence of wealth.

Writers and Writing

To write what is worth publishing, to find honest people to publish it, and get sensible people to read it, are the three great difficulties in being an author.