“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.”

Times of great calamity and confusion have been productive for the greatest minds. The purest ore is produced from the hottest furnace. The brightest thunder-bolt is elicited from the darkest storm.

Grant graciously what you cannot refuse safely and conciliate those you cannot conquer.

It is the briefest yet wisest maxim which tells us to meddle not.

For one man who sincerely pities our misfortunes, there are a thousand who sincerely hate our success.

Logic and metaphysics make use of more tools than all the rest of the sciences put together, and do the least work.

As no roads are so rough as those that have just been mended, so no sinners are so intolerant as those that have just turned saints.

Silence is less injurious than a weak reply.

Next to acquiring good friends, the best acquisition is that of good books.

It is doubtful whether mankind are most indebted to those who like Bacon and Butler dig the gold from the mine of literature, or to those who, like Paley, purify it, stamp it, fix its real value, and give it currency and utility.

We often pretend to fear what we really despise, and more often despise what we really fear.

Mystery magnifies danger as the fog the sun.

A high degree of intellectual refinement in the female is the surest pledge society can have for the improvement of the male.

He that swells in prosperity will be sure to shrink in adversity.

Happiness, that grand mistress of the ceremonies in the dance of life, impels us through all its mazes and meanderings, but leads none of us by the same route.

Happiness leads none of us by the same route.

Temperate men drink the most, because they drink the longest.

I have a few minor rules for myself but I break them all the time. For example, when translating from Romance languages to English, there is often a choice between a Latinate cognate and a Germanic equivalent.

Reading across three languages is a way for me to diversify my intake as a reader, not to tunnel into certain categories or demographics.

We breathe in our first language, and swim in our second.

Don’t use the language of ‘good’ or ‘bad’ when talking about blood sugar numbers

I think in many ways, the Spanish Civil War was the first battle of World War II.

Like the weaver, the writer works on the wrong side of his material. He has only to do with the language, and it is thus that he suddenly finds himself surrounded by sense.

But I think people, especially white people, have to come to understand that the language of the ghetto is a language of its own, and as the party – whose members for the most part come from the ghetto – seeks to talk to the people, it must speak the people’s language.

Speak the language of the person you want to become.