“Let us speak, though we show all our faults and weaknesses, – for it is a sign of strength to be weak, to know it, and out with it – not in a set way and ostentatiously, though, but incidentally and without premeditation.”

The Past is the textbook of tyrants; the Future the Bible of the Free. Those who are solely governed by the Past stand like Lot’s wife, crystallized in the act of looking backward, and forever incapable of looking before.

All deep, earnest thinking is but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea, while the wildest winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the treacherous, slavish shore.

Ladies are like creeds; if you cannot speak well of them, say nothing.

Better be an old maid, a woman with herself as a husband, than the wife of a fool; and Solomon more than hints that all men are fools; and every wise man knows himself to be one.

Honor lies in the mane of a horse.

The poor man wants many things; the covetous man, all.

There is nothing so slipperily alluring as sadness; we become sad in the first place by having nothing stirring to do; we continue in it, because we have found a snug sofa at last.

Yet habit – strange thing! what cannot habit accomplish?

If you can get nothing better out of the world, get a good dinner out of it, at least.

Thinking is, or ought to be, a coolness and a calmness; and our poor hearts throb, and our poor brains beat too much for that.

Old age is always wakeful; as if, the longer linked with life, the less man has to do with aught that looks like death.

In a multitude of acquaintances is less security, than in one faithful friend.

The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails whereon my soul is grooved to run

As for me, I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts.

Benevolent desires, after passing a certain point, can not undertake their own fulfillment without incurring the risk of evils beyond those sought to be remedied.

Whatever my fate, I’ll go to it laughing.

Most people have a hard time confronting their weaknesses in a really straightforward, evidence-based way. They also have problems speaking frankly to others. Some people love knowing about their weaknesses and mistakes and those of others because it helps them be so much better, while others can’t stand it.

If I allow journalists to describe a collection and they make mistakes, I’m upset, because the retractions are never noticed.

Many a false step was made by standing still.

Mistakes and failures are precisely your means of education. They tell you about your own inadequacies.

Experience is making mistakes and learning from them.

The worst mistake a leader can make is to mentor no one, choose no successor and leave no legacy.

The first mistake is never the one that ruins you. It’s the spiral of repeated mistakes that follows.

Mistakes are the price of an interesting life.