“Plots, true or false, are necessary things, To raise up commonwealths and ruin kings.”

Seas are the fields of combat for the winds; but when they sweep along some flowery coast, their wings move mildly, and their rage is lost.

Reason to rule, mercy to forgive: The first is law, the last prerogative. Life is an adventure in forgiveness.

For age but tastes of pleasures youth devours.

Words are but pictures of our thoughts.

By education most have been misled.

If by the people you understand the multitude, the hoi polloi, ’tis no matter what they think; they are sometimes in the right, sometimes in the wrong; their judgment is a mere lottery.

Presence of mind and courage in distress, Are more than arrives to procure success?

Nor is the people’s judgment always true: the most may err as grossly as the few.

And plenty makes us poor.

Set all things in their own peculiar place, and know that order is the greatest grace.

Parting is worse than death; it is death of love!

For what can power give more than food and drink, To live at ease, and not be bound to think?

All things are subject to decay and when fate summons, monarchs must obey.

Shakespeare was the Homer, or father of our dramatic poets;Jonson was theVirgil, the pattern of elaborate writing; I admire him, but I love Shakespeare.

All flowers will droop in the absence of the sun that waked their sweets.

Sweet is pleasure after pain.

Do not have Jesus Christ on your lips, and the world in your heart.

Idolatry is committed, not merely by setting up false gods, but also by setting up false devils; by making men afraid of war or alcohol, or economic law, when they should be afraid of spiritual corruption and cowardice.

You proceed from a false assumption: I have no ego to bruise.

Find the trend whose premise is false, and bet against it.

There’s no substitute for will. Sometimes you have to fake will when you don’t feel it at all.

I don’t think that you can fake warmth. You can fake lust, jealousy, anger; those are all quite easy. But actual, genuine warmth? I don’t think you can fake it.

Self esteem comes from achievements. Not from lax standards and false praise.

Solitude is the furnace of transformation. Without solitude we remain victims of our society and continue to be entangled in the illusions of the false self.