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

It is easier to pretend to be what you are not than to hide what you really are; but he that can accomplish both has little to learn in hypocrisy.

We may anticipate bliss, but who ever drank of that enchanted cup unalloved?

We know the effects of many things, but the cause of few; experience, therefore, is a surer guide than imagination, and inquiry than conjecture.

There are prating coxcombs in the world who would rather talk than listen, although Shakespeare himself were the orator, and human nature the theme!

Falsehood is often rocked by truth, but she soon outgrows her cradle and discards her nurse.

The present time has one advantage over every other — it is our own.

Hurry is the mark of a weak mind, dispatch of a strong one.

Pain may be said to follow pleasure as its shadow; but the misfortune is that in this particular case, the substance belongs to the shadow, the emptiness to its cause.

There were moments of despondency when Shakespeare thought himself no poet, and Raphael no painter; when the greatest wits have doubted the excellence of their happiest efforts.

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.

The poverty from which I have suffered could be diagnosed as ‘Soho’ poverty. It comes from having the airs and graces of a genius and no talent.

By the grace of God I want to impart the Word, and bring you into a place where you will dare to act upon the plan of the Word, to so breathe life by the power of the Word that it is impossible for you to go on under any circumstances without his provision.

Manners, really good ones, make it possible to live with almost anyone, gracefully and pleasantly.

At times it seems we require more grace to lose our wealth than to lose our life!

For his heart was in his work, and the heart giveth grace unto every art.

Do you know whether or not you are in God’s grace? Joan: If I am not, may God put me there; and if I am, may God so keep me.

Any artist should be grateful for a naive grace which puts him beyond the need to reason elaborately.

The Helicon of too many poets is not a hill crowned with sunshine and visited by the Muses and the Graces, but an old, mouldering house, full of gloom and haunted by ghosts.