“Democracy means despair of finding any heroes to govern you, and contented putting up with the want of them.”

Today is not yesterday: we ourselves change; how can our works and thoughts, if they are always to be the fittest, continue always the same? Change, indeed is painful; yet ever needful; and if memory have its force and worth, so also has hope.

A man lives by believing something: not by debating and arguing about many things.

Endurance is patience concentrated.

Nothing builds self-esteem and self-confidence like accomplishment.

See deep enough, and you see musically.

A well-written life is almost as rare as a well-spent one.

Blessed is he who has found his work; let him ask no other blessedness.

Without kindness there can be no true joy.

There are good and bad times, but our mood changes more often than our fortune.

The first duty of man is that of subduing fear.

If Jesus Christ were to come today, people would not even crucify him. They would ask him to dinner, and hear what he had to say, and make fun of it.

There can be no acting or doing of any kind till it be recognized that there is a thing to be done; the thing once recognized, doing in a thousand shapes becomes possible.

One monster there is in the world, the idle man.

A person who is gifted sees the essential point and leaves the rest as surplus.

What we become depends on what we read after all of the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is a collection of books.

A well-written life is almost as rare as a well-spent one.