This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.

There is properly no history, only biography.

There is no den in the wide world to hide a rogue. Commit a crime and the earth is made of glass. Commit a crime, and it seems as if a coat of snow fell on the ground, such as...

There are many things of which a wise man might wish to be ignorant.

The world belongs to the energetic.

The peril of every fine faculty is the delight of playing with it for pride. Talent is commonly developed at the expense of character, and the greater it grows, the more is the...

The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it.

The only way to have a friend is to be one.

The only gift is a portion of thyself.

The measure of a master is his success in bringing all men around to his opinion twenty years later.

The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.

The life of man is the true romance, which when it is valiantly conduced, will yield the imagination a higher joy than any fiction.

The key to every man is his thought. Sturdy and defying though he look, he has a helm which he obeys, which is the idea after which all his facts are classified. He can only be...

The foolish man wonders at the unusual, but the wise man at the usual.

The essence of all jokes, of all comedy, seems to be an honest or well intended halfness; a non performance of that which is pretended to be performed, at the same time that one...

The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.

The ancestor of every action is a thought.

The adventitious beauty of poetry may be felt in the greater delight with a verse given in a happy quotation than in the poem.

That which we persist in doing becomes easier, not that the task itself has become easier, but that our ability to perform it has improved.

Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect.