There will always be a part, and always a very large part of every community, that have no care but for themselves, and whose care for themselves reaches little further than...

Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must be first overcome.

Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.

Mankind have a great aversion to intellectual labor; but even supposing knowledge to be easily attainable, more people would be content to be ignorant than would take even a...

Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information on it.

What we hope ever to do with ease we may learn first to do with diligence.

Men are generally idle, and ready to satisfy themselves, and intimidate the industry of others, by calling that impossible which is only difficult.

Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.

No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned.

It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives. The act of dying is not of importance, it lasts so short a time.

Classical quotation is the parole of literary men all over the world.

It is very strange, and very melancholy, that the paucity of human pleasures should persuade us ever to call hunting one of them.

The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.

Your manuscript is both good and original, but the part that is good is not original and the part that is original is not good.

A man may be so much of everything that he is nothing of anything.

You teach your daughters the diameters of the planets and wonder when you are done that they do not delight in your company.

Wine makes a man more pleased with himself; I do not say that it makes him more pleasing to others.

While grief is fresh, every attempt to divert only irritates. You must wait till it be digested, and then amusement will dissipate the remains of it.

When once a man has made celebrity necessary to his happiness, he has put it in the power of the weakest and most timorous malignity, if not to take away his satisfaction, at...

What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.