“All men are alike in their lower natures; it is in their higher characters that they differ.”

False friends are like our shadow, keeping close to us while we walk in the sunshine, but leaving us the instant we cross into the shade.

There are seaons when our passions have slept so long that we know not whether they still exist in us. So does flax forget that it is combustible when the fire is away from it.

Life is indeed either a rich possession or a poor, according as it is made subservient to noble aims or ignoble pleasures.

Discretion is the salt, and fancy the sugar of life; the one preserves, the other sweetens it.

Great warriors, like great earthquakes, are principally remembered for the mischief they have done.

Give me the character and I will forecast the event.

To vindicate the sanctity of human life by taking it is an outrage upon reason. The spectacle of a human being dangling at the end of a gallows-rope is a degradation of humanity.

If it is a distinction to have written a good book, it is also a disgrace to have written a bad one.

Dignity of position adds to dignity of character, as well as to dignity of carriage. Give us a proud position, and we are impelled to act up to it.

Genius makes its observations in short-hand; talent writes them out at length.

Successful love takes a load off our hearts, and puts it upon our shoulders.

We make way for the man who boldly pushes past us.

Without death in the world, existence in it would soon become, through over-population, the most frightful of curses.

Difficulties, by bracing the mind to overcome them, assist cheerfulness, as exercise assists digestion.

Nothing is so fragile as thought in its infancy; an interruption breaks it: nothing is so powerful, even to overturning empires, when it reaches its maturity.

It is the nature of thought to find its way into action.

You can’t blame a writer for what the characters say.

I am very opinionated and sometimes a very irritating character but, I have learnt that the quest to learn is a journey, not a destination.

My look and my character come from my experiences as a child. I wasn’t allowed to have girl toys, and I grew up poor. I also had a rough relationship with my stepdad.

Hypocrisy is the characteristic feature of the dying bourgeois epoch.

Intelligent men are cruel. Stupid men are monstrously cruel.

They please the world most, who please Christ least.

Poetry is the loveliest art. It has a wretched way of revealing our own character when we think we are judging the poets.

When the mind once allows a doubt to gain entrance, the value of deeds performed grow less, their character changes, we forget the past and dread the future.