“Nothing more completely baffles one who is full of trick and duplicity himself, than straight forward and simple integrity in another.”

Eloquence is the language of nature, and cannot be learned in the schools; but rhetoric is the creature of art, which he who feels least will most excel in.

It is good to act as if. It is even better to grow to the point where it is no longer an act.

It is astonishing how much more people are interested in lengthening life than improving it.

Most females will forgive a liberty rather than a slight.

Those that are the loudest in their threats are the weakest in their actions.

The avarice of the miser may be termed the grand sepulchral of all his other passions, as they successively decay.

I have found by experience that they who have spent all their lives in cities, improve their talents but impair their virtues; and strengthen their minds but weaken their morals.

Human foresight often leaves its proudest possessor only a choice of evils.

Commerce flourishes by circumstances, precarious, transitory, contingent, almost as the winds and waves that bring it to our shores.

The true measure of your character is what you do when nobody’s watching.

To cure us of our immoderate love of gain, we should seriously consider how many goods there are that money will not purchase, and these the best; and how many evils there are that money will not remedy, and these the worst.

It is not so difficult a task to plant new truths, as to root out old errors; for there is this paradox in men, they run after that which is new, but are prejudiced in favor of that which is old.

Hope is a prodigal young heir, and experience is his banker.

A fool is often as dangerous to deal with as a knave, and always more incorrigible.

He that studies books alone, will know how things ought to be; and he that studies men, will know how things are.

Man is an embodied paradox, a bundle of contradictions.

Discipline yourself, so no one else has to.

Love is freedom. The freedom to express the most joyous part of Who You Are. The part that knows that you are One with everything and everyone.

Awareness is a blissful state, not a painful one.

A wise person once wrote, “Resentment is like drinking poison and hoping the other person would die.” But the only one dying is ourselves.

The fruit and the purpose of prayer is to be oned with and like God in all things.

In a world as weird and cruel as this one we have made for ourselves, I figure anybody who can find peace and personal happiness without ripping off somebody else deserves to be left alone.

If you follow your bliss…the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living.

One definition of maturity is learning to delay pleasure.