“My idea of an agreeable person is a person who agrees with me.”

I have brought myself, by long meditation, to the conviction that a human being with a settled purpose must accomplish it, and that nothing can resist a will which will stake even existence upon its fulfillment.

One secret of success in life is for a man to be ready for his opportunity when it comes.

It destroys one’s nerves to be amiable every day to the same human being.

Things must be done by parties, not by persons using parties as tools.

The choicest pleasures of life lie within the ring of moderation.

There is no waste of time in life like that of making explanations.

He has left them in the full enjoyment of their liberal positions, and he is himself a strict conservative of their garments.

Something unpleasant is coming when men are anxious to tell the truth.

Nationality is the miracle of political independence; race is the principle of physical analogy.

The first magic of love is our ignorance that it can ever end.

In politics nothing is contemptible.

I repeat… that all power is a trust; that we are accountable for its exercise; that from the people and for the people all springs, and all must exist.

We are all born for love. It is the principle of existence, and its only end.

The best security for civilization is the dwelling, and upon properly appointed and becoming dwellings depends, more than anything else, the improvement of mankind.

What we anticipate seldom occurs: but what we least expect generally happens.

War is never a solution; it is an aggravation.

Hung it on each side with curious organs of sense, given it airs and graces that cannot be described, and surrounded it with such a flowing shade of hair as sets all its beauties in the most agreeable light.

A sadder but wiser man is a thousand times more agreeable to meet than the feller that never makes a mistake.

I have simplified my politics into an utter detestation of all existing governments; and, as it is the shortest and most agreeable and summary feeling imaginable.

Your true traveller finds boredom rather agreeable than painful. It is the symbol of his liberty – his excessive freedom.

Hope, deceiving as it is, serves at least to lead us to the end of our lives by an agreeable route.

The reason why so few people are agreeable in conversation is that each is thinking more about what he intends to say than others are saying.

A true disciple inquires not whether a fact is agreeable to his own reason.

You will find that the truth is often unpopular and the contest between agreeable fancy and disagreeable fact is unequal.