“Body and mind, like man and wife, do not always agree to die together.”

Man is an embodied paradox, a bundle of contradictions.

It is better to meet danger than to wait for it. He that is on a lee shore, and foresees a hurricane, stands out to sea and encounters a storm to avoid a shipwreck.

Doubt is the vestibule of faith.

The awkwardness and embarrassment which all feel on beginning to write, when they themselves are the theme, ought to serve as a hint to author’s that self is a subject they ought very rarely to descant upon.

Insults are engendered from vulgar minds, like toadstools from a dunghill.

That writer does the most who gives his reader the most knowledge and takes from him the least time.

Theories are private property, but truth is common stock.

Sturdy beggars can bear stout denials.

None are so fond of secrets as those who do not mean to keep them.

Let those who would affect singularity with success first determine to be very virtuous, and they will be sure to be very singular.

That is fine benevolence, finely executed, which, like the Nile, comes from hidden sources.

That is true beauty which has not only a substance, but a spirit; a beauty that we must intimately know, justly to appreciate.

Liberty will not descend to a people; a people must raise themselves to liberty; it is a blessing that must be earned before it can be enjoyed.

Some persons will tell you, with an air of the miraculous, that they recovered although they were given over; whereas they might with more reason have said, they recovered because they were given over.

There are three kinds of praise, that which we yield, that which we lend, and that which we pay. We yield it to the powerful from fear, we lend it to the weak from interest, and we pay it to the deserving from gratitude.

The good opinion of our fellow men is the strongest, though not the purest motive to virtue.

I really liked one girl and asked her out 22 times, but she always said no. Finally I sang to her, and she said she’d go out with me.

Most of us believe everyone has a right to his own opinion – as long as it agrees with ours.

If we cannot agree, let us at any rate agree to differ, but let us part as friends.

I read every agreement of every contract. Anything I put my signature on, I really do read them. And I find things.

Our differences are policies; our agreements, principles.

Treaties are like roses and young girls. They last while they last.

Politics and the pulpit are terms that have little agreement.

I think the word of the United States has been as good as gold in its international dealings and its agreements.