Master books, but do not let them master you. - Read to live, not live to read.
Chance happens to all, but to turn chance to account is the gift of few.
Whatever the number of a man's friends, there will be times in his life when he has one too few; but if he has only one enemy, he is lucky indeed if he has not one too many.
Happiness and virtue rest upon each other; the best are not only the happiest, but the happiest are usually the best.
In science, read, by preference, the newest works; in literature, the oldest. The classic literature is always modern.
If you wish to be loved, show more of your faults than your virtues.
Truth makes on the ocean of nature no one track of light; every eye, looking on, finds its own.
First must give place to last, because last must have his time to come; but last gives place to nothing, for there is not another to succeed.
The person who grieves suffers his passion to grow upon him; he indulges it, he loves it; but this never happens in the case of actual pain, which no man ever willingly endured for any considerable time.
The nerve that never relaxes, the eye that never blanches, the thought that never wanders, the purpose that never wavers - these are the masters of victory.
It is hard to say whether the doctors of law or divinity have made the greater advances in the lucrative business of mystery.
Nothing is so fatal to religion as indifference, which is, at least, half infidelity.
If you live to the age of a hundred, you have it made because very very few people die past the age of a hundred.
If we take science as our sole guide, if we accept and hold fast that alone which is verifiable, the old theology must go.
There is always a heavy demand for fresh mediocrity. In every generation the least cultivated taste has the largest appetite.
Misery assails riches, as lightning does the highest towers; or as a tree that is heavy laden with fruit breaks its own boughs, so riches destroy the virtue of their possessor.
Like dogs in a wheel, birds in a cage, or squirrels in a chain, ambitious men still climb and climb, with great labor, and incessant anxiety, but never reach the top.
Worldly wealth is the Devil's bait; and those whose minds feed upon riches recede, in general, from real happiness, in proportion as their stores increase, as the moon, when she is fullest, is farthest from the sun.
Your talent is God's gift to you. What you do with it is your gift back to God.
All animals but men know that the principle business of life is to enjoy it -and they do enjoy it as much as man and other circumstances will allow it.
All progress is based upon the universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income.
God cannot alter the past, that is why he is obliged to connive at the existence of historians.
Any fool can tell the truth, but it requires a man of some sense to know how to lie well.
Life is a quarry, out of which we are to mold and chisel and complete a character.
All progress is based upon a universal innate desire of every organism to live beyond its income.
The very fact of its finding itself in agreement with other minds perturbs it, so that it hunts for points of divergence, feeling the urgent need to make it clear that at least it reached the same conclusions by a different route.
Power intoxicates men. It is never voluntarily surrendered. It must be taken from them.
Think, and be careful what thou art within; For there is sin in the desire of sin; Think, and be thankful, in a different case; For there is grace in the desire of grace.
Death, so called, is a thing which makes men weep, And yet a third of life is passed in sleep.
O Fame! if I e'er took delight in thy praises, 'Twas less for the sake of thy high-sounding phrases, Than to see the bright eyes of the dear one discover The thought that I was not unworthy to love her.
Society is now one polished horde, Formed of two mighty tribes, the Bores and the Bored.
When the green woods laugh with the voice of joy, And the dimpling stream runs laughing by; When the air does laugh with our merry wit, And the green hill laughs with the noise of it.
'Tis sweet to know there is an eye will mark our coming, and look brighter when we come.
Yes, Love indeed is light from heaven; A spark of that immortal fire with angels shared, by Allah given to lift from earth our low desire.
I have great hopes that we shall love each other all our lives as much as if we had never married at all.