“Common sense, alas in spite of our educational institutions, is a rare commodity.”

Wit never appears to greater advantage than when it is successfully exerted to relieve from a dilemma, palliate a deficiency, or cover a retreat.

The great artist is a slave to his ideals.

When we get tired of enjoying all the pleasures within our reach, we have still a resource in thinking of others that are not.

Example has more followers than reason. We unconsciously imitate what pleases us, and approximate to the characters we most admire.

The cheerful live longest in years, and afterwards in our regards. Cheerfulness is the off-shoot of goodness.

The passions are like fire, useful in a thousand ways and dangerous only in one, through their excess.

Winter is the night of vegetation.

A profusion of fancies and quotations is out of place in a love-letter. True feeling is always direct, and never deviates into by-ways to cull flowers of rhetoric.

What we call conscience in many instances, is only a wholesome fear of the law.

There is great beauty in going through life without anxiety or fear. Half our fears are baseless, and the other half discreditable.

There is probably no hell for authors in the next world – they suffer so much from critics and publishers in this.

Kindred weaknesses induce friendships as often as kindred virtues.

The heart contracts as the pocket expands.

Hope is the best part of our riches.

Alas, the transports beauty can inspire!

The small courtesies sweeten life; the greater ennoble it.

I went to the public schools myself. And they were great for me.

Teachers are the most important individuals in our society – nothing is as powerful as the human touch in education.

It’s evolution, man. Eventually the student becomes the teacher.

I will never be a stupid girl… and neither should you. Today, charting your own course isn’t just more necessary than ever before… it’s also much easier — and much more fun. A good education is one of the greatest gifts you could ever give yourself.

In America, with education and hard work, it really does not matter where you came from; it matters only where you are going.

The best armor against everything around you is to be well educated, to work hard, to be twice as good as if you had to be, to do languages and culture better.

Academic education is the act of memorizing things read in books, and things told by college professors who got their education mostly by memorizing things read in books.

Maths is totally done differently to what I was teached when I was at school.