“Books, like friends, should be few and well chosen. Like friends, too, we should return to them again and again for, like true friends, they will never fail us – never cease to instruct – never cloy.”

The more gross the fraud the more glibly will it go down, and the more greedily be swallowed, since folly will always find faith where impostors will find imprudence.

Constant success shows us but one side of the world; adversity brings out the reverse of the picture.

Some read to think, these are rare; some to write, these are common; and some read to talk, and these form the great majority.

Unlike the sun, intellectual luminaries shine brightest after they set.

There are male as well as female gossips.

The poorest man would not part with health for money, but the richest would gladly part with all their money for health.

Honor is unstable and seldom the same; for she feeds upon opinion, and is as fickle as her food.

An honest man will continue to be so though surrounded on all sides by rogues.

Much may be done in those little shreds and patches of time which every day produces, and which most men throw away.

Oppression cannot prosper where none will submit to be enslaved.

He that has never known adversity is but half acquainted with others, or with himself.

The victim to too severe a law is considered as a martyr rather than a criminal.

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

The head of dullness, unlike the tail of the torpedo, loses nothing of the benumbing and lethargizing influence by reiterated discharges.

The study of mathematics, like the Nile, begins in minuteness but ends in magnificence.

If you are under obligations to many, it is prudent to postpone the recompensing of one, until it be in your power to remunerate all; otherwise you will make more enemies by what you give, than by what you withhold.

The one infallible sign that a spiritual teacher is a fraud is that he charges money for his instruction.

To bring a child into existence without a fair prospect of being able, not only to provide food for its body, but instruction and training for its mind is a moral crime, both against the unfortunate offspring and against society.

In our system, we leave questions of fact to a jury. But to render a verdict, a jury must know the law. For this, we rely upon jury instructions.

Instructions are supposed to translate the law into lay terms that the jury can apply to the facts as they determine them.

When all else fails, read the instructions.

I never did anything, great or small, without obtaining in advance express instructions from Adolf Hitler or any of my superiors.

Bad company is as instructive as licentiousness. One makes up for the loss of one’s innocence with the loss of one’s prejudices.

Drawing is one of those things which sit on the uneasy bending line between instinct and instruction, where seeming perversity eventually trumps pleasure as the card players and the kibitzers interact and new thrills are sought.