“I have somewhere seen it observed that we should make the same use of a book that the bee does of a flower: she steals sweets from it, but does not injure it.”

Human foresight often leaves its proudest possessor only a choice of evils.

Commerce flourishes by circumstances, precarious, transitory, contingent, almost as the winds and waves that bring it to our shores.

The true measure of your character is what you do when nobody’s watching.

To cure us of our immoderate love of gain, we should seriously consider how many goods there are that money will not purchase, and these the best; and how many evils there are that money will not remedy, and these the worst.

It is not so difficult a task to plant new truths, as to root out old errors; for there is this paradox in men, they run after that which is new, but are prejudiced in favor of that which is old.

Hope is a prodigal young heir, and experience is his banker.

A fool is often as dangerous to deal with as a knave, and always more incorrigible.

He that studies books alone, will know how things ought to be; and he that studies men, will know how things are.

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.

Together, we can make ourselves a nation that spends more on books than on bombs, more on hospitals than the terrible tools of war, more on decent houses than military aircraft.

I don’t normally have time to read, so when I go away I like to take a few books.

When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap – people shouldn’t read that stuff.

The Devil writes down our sins – our Guardian Angel all our merits. Labor that the Guardian Angel’s book may be full, and the Devil’s empty.

I will say I am the sum of my books.

But everything of value about me is in my books.

Making a book is such a big enterprise.

There is something incomparably thrilling in first opening a brand new book.