“Cecil’s dispatch of business was extraordinary, his maxim being, “The shortest way to do many things is to do only one thing at once.””

It is a mistake to suppose that men succeed through success; they much oftener succeed through failures. Precept, study, advice, and example could never have taught them so well as failure has done.

The apprenticeship of difficulty is one which the greatest of men have had to serve.

The possession of a library, or the free use of it, no more constitutes learning, than the possession of wealth constitutes generosity.

Alexander the Great valued learning so highly, that he used to say he was more indebted to Aristotle for giving him knowledge than to his father Philip for life.

The women of the poorer classes make sacrifices, and run risks, and bear privations, and exercise patience and kindness to a degree that the world never knows of, and would scarcely believe even if it did know.

Purposes, like eggs, unless they be hatched into action, will run into rottenness.

The truest politeness comes of sincerity.

Luck whines; labor whistles.

He who labours not, cannot enjoy the reward of labour.

Childhood is like a mirror, which reflects in after life the images first presented to it.

One might almost fear,” writes a thoughtful woman, “seeing how the women of to-day are lightly stirred up to run after some new fashion or faith, that heaven is not so near to them as it was to their mothers and grandmothers.

Self-control is only courage under another form.

Riches are oftener an impediment than a stimulus to action; and in many cases they are quite as much a misfortune as a blessing.

The tiniest bits of opinion sown in the minds of children in private life afterwards issue forth to the world, and become its public opinion; for nations are gathered out of nurseries.

A fig-tree looking on a fig-tree becometh fruitful,” says the Arabian proverb. And so it is with children; their first great instructor is example.

The greatest slave is not he who is ruled by a despot, great though that evil be, but he who is in the thrall of his own moral ignorance, selfishness, and vice.

She had caprices of a marvellous unexpectedness, and how is any one to imitate a caprice?

According to Beckett’s or Kafka’s law, there is immobility beyond movement: beyond standing up, there is sitting down, and beyond sitting down, lying down, beyond which one finally dissipates.

For me, revolution is around young people with no skills, college education, and coming from everywhere having an economic impact on an entire system which no one notices.

I think it’s a mistake to ever look for hope outside of one’s self.

Anyone can write. But comedy, you’ve got to do some writing. You get one comedy script to every 20 dramas.

One can always reason with reason.

People have to allow themselves to be used by God and Martin [Luther King, Jr.] committed himself totally to God’s will and purpose and God is always waiting for someone who is willing to do that.

Every man has by nature the right to possess property as his own. This is one of the chief points of distinction between man and the animal creation.