“Too exact, and studious of similitude rather than of beauty.”

A liar must have a good memory.

The gifts of nature are infinite in their variety, and mind differs from mind almost as much as body from body.

A mediocre speech supported by all the power of delivery will be more impressive than the best speech unaccompanied by such power.

Lately we have had many losses.

It is the heart which inspires eloquence.

Where evil habits are once settled, they are more easily broken than mended.

The soul languishing in obscurity contracts a kind of rust, or abandons itself to the chimera of presumption; for it is natural for it to acquire something, even when separated from any one.

While we are making up our minds as to when we shall begin. The opportunity is lost.

When defeat is inevitable, it is wisest to yield.

Our minds are like our stomaches; they are whetted by the change of their food, and variety supplies both with fresh appetite.

Though ambition may be a fault in itself, it is often the mother of virtues.

In almost everything, experience is more valuable than precept.

To my mind the boy who gives least promise is one in whom the critical faculty develops in advance of the imagination.

It is worth while too to warn the teacher that undue severity in correcting faults is liable at times to discourage a boy’s mind from effort.

For it would have been better that man should have been born dumb, nay, void of all reason, rather than that he should employ the gifts of Providence to the destruction of his neighbor.

Usage is the best language teacher.

We didn’t have cable TV. We just couldn’t afford it. But you don’t need cable to watch the Masters. In 1997, at the exact moment I started out, I watched Tiger Woods win the Masters.

The really great novel tends to be the exact negative of its author’s life.

Justice is never given; it is exacted.

Though men are apt to flatter and exalt themselves with their great achievements, yet these are, in truth, very often owing not so much to design as chance.

There’s nothing better than having an experience now that’s the exact same thing.

Justice is never given; it is exacted and the struggle must be continuous for freedom is never a final fact, but a continuing evolving process to higher and higher levels of human, social, economic, political and religious relationship.

Just didn’t know whether I would finish the book much less for it to come close to what I intended. I think that for any novel you never know exactly how the book is going to turn out…

Sometimes they are the same exact thing.