An instructed and intelligent people are always more decent and orderly than an ignorant and stupid one.

No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable.

It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.

The first thing you have to know is yourself. A man who knows himself can step outside himself and watch his own reactions like an observer.

Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.

The real price of everything, what everything really costs to the man who wants to acquire it, is the toil and trouble of acquiring it.

What can be added to the happiness of the man who is in health, who is out of debt, and has a clear conscience?

A nation is not made wealthy by the childish accumulation of shiny metals, but it enriched by the economic prosperity of it's people.

Man is an animal that makes bargains: no other animal does this - no dog exchanges bones with another.

On the road from the City of Skepticism, I had to pass through the Valley of Ambiguity.

People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.

When you cross a challenge that is expansive and deep, you may not even realize when you’ve come to the other side. That day will come. And when it does, how will you look at your crossing?

Be always resolute with the present hour. Every moment is of infinite value.

We're not home-and-hearth people. We're the adventurers, the buccaneers, the blockade runners. Without challenge, we're only alive.

Every child, woman, and man should possess license to speak or sing in his or her true voice.

Well, I don't think characters change. I think they become more revealed. I don't think you really can change a character on a show.

We'll all grow up someday, Meg, we might as well know what we want. ~Amy March~

Democracy, it appears, is a bit chancy. But its chances also depend on what we do ourselves

If you miss someone too much you turn into them... though it doesn't seem to work for the Christian Church.

An ex-wife is a woman with a crick in the neck from looking back over her shoulder at her matrimony.

By Heaven, I love thee better than myself