“If it is a distinction to have written a good book, it is also a disgrace to have written a bad one.”

Troubles forereckoned are doubly suffered.

The knowledge beyond all other knowledge is the knowledge how to excuse.

It is some compensation for great evils, that they enforce great lessons.

Wit, like poetry, is insusceptible of being constructed upon rules founded merely in reason. Like faith, it exists independent of reason, and sometimes in hostility to it.

It is with charity as with money–the more we stand in need of it, the less we have to give away.

Contentment is not happiness. An oyster may be contented. Happiness is compounded of richer elements.

A failure establishes only this, that our determination to succeed was not strong enough.

No man is happy without a delusion of some kind. Delusions are as necessary to our happiness as realities.

Cheerfulness is an offshoot of goodness and of wisdom.

The great obstacle to progress is prejudice.

The lively and mercurial are as open books, with the leaves turned down at the notable passages. Their souls sit at the windows of their eyes, seeing and to be seen.

Words, like cannon balls, should go direct to their mark.

Tearless grief bleeds inwardly.

A sound discretion is not so much indicated by never making a mistake as by never repeating it.

The method of the enterprising is to plan with audacity and execute with vigor.

How like a railway tunnel is the poor man’s life, with the light of childhood at one end, the intermediate gloom, and only the glimmer of a future life at the other extremity!

It is better to remain silent than to speak the truth ill-humoredly, and spoil an excellent dish by covering it with bad sauce.

A stout heart breaks bad luck.

WHY IS IT so easy to repeat bad habits and so hard to form good ones?

Put another way, the costs of your good habits are in the present. The costs of your bad habits are in the future.

It is much easier to make good men wise, than to make bad men good.

I don’t believe in putting in music as a band aid to get you over some rough parts or bad film making. If it’s there it’s got to add to it or take it to another level.

In real life there are no bad guys. Everybody just has their own perspective.

To let a fool kiss you is bad. To let a kiss fool you is worse. ‘Twas not my lips you kissed but my soul.