The art of will-making chiefly consists in baffling the importunity of expectation.

The player envies only the player, the poet envies only the poet.

A great mind is one that can forget or look beyond itself.

The measure of any man’s virtue is what he would do, if he had neither the laws nor public opinion, nor even his own prejudices, to control him.

In what we really understand, we reason but little.

To be wiser than other men is to be honester than they; and strength of mind is only courage to see and speak the truth.

Political truth is a libel—religious truth blasphemy.

One truth discovered, one pang of regret at not being able to express it, is better than all the fluency and flippancy in the world.

He will never have true friends who is afraid of making enemies.

Most of the methods for measuring the lapse of time have, I believe, been the contrivance of monks and religious recluses, who, finding time hang heavy on their hands, were at some pains to see how they got rid of it.