Habit is the beneficent harness of routine which enables silly men to live respectfully and unhappy men to live calmly

It is never too late to be what you might have been.

Animals are such agreeable friends - they ask no questions; they pass no criticisms.

Don't judge a book by its cover

A man's a man. But when you see a king, you see the work of many thousand men.

Only in the agony of parting do we look into the depths of love.

The beginning of compunction is the beginning of a new life.

The rich ate and drank freely, accepting gout and apoplexy as things that ran mysteriously in respectable families.

Plainness has its peculiar temptations and vices quite as much as beauty.

What makes life dreary is the want of a motive.

Don't you meddle with me, and I won't meddle with you.

He knows nothing he thinks he knows everything - that clearly points to a political career.

When I was outed, it was like, That's done.

I certainly have a lot to lament, as do we all, everybody has their griefs. But the griefs we can fix, shouldn't we go around fixing them?

A true personality . . . is like a robust organism that, with unconscious sureness, seeks out and digests the nourishment appropriate to it and vigorously rejects that which is unsuitable.

The artist who imagines that he puts his best into a portrait in order to produce something good, which will be a pleasure to the sitter and to himself, will have some bitter experiences.

No preacher is listened to but time, which gives us the same train and turn of thought that elder people have in vain tried to put into our heads before.

Excellence is going the extra mile.

Protecting Americans from harm goes beyond police and national defense. It's imperative that we not destroy the commons, the physical environment on which we rely.

There are an awful lot of things going on that need understanding and explanation, but - to put it mildly - the world is a mess.

Divide responsibility and nobody is responsible.