“A man’s first care should be to avoid the reproaches of his own heart.”

One of the most important but one of the most difficult things for a powerful mind is to be its own master.

In private conversation between intimate friends, the wisest men very often talk like the weakest : for indeed the talking with a friend is nothing else but thinking aloud.

Music, the greatest good that mortals know and all of heaven we have hear below.

Silence is sometimes more significant and sublime than the most noble and most expressive eloquence, and is on many occasions the indication of a great mind.

True happiness arises, in the first place, from the enjoyment of one’s self, and in the next, from the friendship and conversation of a few select companions.

What sunshine is to flowers, smiles are to humanity. These are but trifles, to be sure; but scattered along life’s pathway, the good they do is inconceivable.

There is not a more pleasing exercise of the mind than gratitude. It is accompanied with such an inward satisfaction that the duty is sufficiently rewarded by the performance

it would generally be found that he had suffered more from the apprehension of such evils as never happened to him than from those evils which had really befallen him.

I never knew an early-rising, hard-working, prudent man, careful of his earnings and strictly honest, who complained of hard luck.

Encourage innocent amusement.

An evil intention perverts the best actions, and makes them sins.

Young men soon give, and soon forget, affronts; old age is slow in both.

Nature does nothing without purpose or uselessly.

Certain is it that there is no kind of affection so purely angelic as of a father to a daughter. In love to our wives there is desire; to our sons, ambition, but to our daughters there is something which there are no words to express.

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 day, an hour, of virtuous liberty Is worth a whole eternity in bondage.

As Chief Secretary to the Treasury, my first responsibility is to the taxpayer.

Speculation in oil stock companies was another great evil … From the first, oil men had to contend with wild fluctuations in the price of oil. …

If we Americans are to survive it will have to be because we choose and elect and defend to be first of all Americans; to present to the world one homogeneous and unbroken front, whether of white Americans or black ones or purple or blue or green…

I also maintain that clear knowledge of natural science must be acquired, in the first instance, through mastery of medicine alone.

If forced to choose between the penitentiary and the White House for four years, I would say the penitentiary, thank you.

The first and most imperative necessity in war is money, for money means everything else — men, guns, ammunition.

If at first you don’t succeed, failure may be your style.

There are two sides to this Baptism: The first is, you possess the Spirit; The second is that the Spirit possesses you.