“Honor is the most capricious in her rewards. She feeds us with air, and often pulls down our house, to build our monument.”

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.

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.

If the faults of men in orders are only to be judged among themselves, they are all in some sort parties; for, since they say the honour of their order is concerned in every member of it, how can we be sure that they will be impartial judges?

Love is a passion Which kindles honor into noble acts.

Just think you are the greatest. Where’s the harm in thinking like that? It is not for pride you do it, but for bringing the best out of you. There is nothing wrong.

There is no reward so delightful, no pleasure so exquisite, as having one’s work known and acclaimed by those whose applause confers honor.

Sharing with Jupiter is never a dishonor.

In the film business, it’s basically honor among thieves.

It is more honorable to be raised to a throne than to be born to one. Fortune bestows the one, merit obtains the other.

If honor were profitable, everybody would be honorable.