Never undertake anything for which you wouldn't have the courage to ask the blessings of heaven.

The Greeks possessed a knowledge of human nature we seem hardly able to attain to without passing through the strengthening hibernation of a new barbarism.

One might call habit a moral friction: something that prevents the mind from gliding over things but connects it with them and makes it hard for it to free itself from them.

Erudition can produce foliage without bearing fruit.

Everyone is a genius at least once a year. The real geniuses simply have their bright ideas closer together.

There exists a species of transcendental ventriloquism by means of which men can be made to believe that something said on earth comes from Heaven.

Just as the performance of the vilest and most wicked deeds requires spirit and talent, so even the greatest demand a certain insensitivity which under other circumstances we would call stupidity.

If there were only turnips and potatoes in the world, someone would complain that plants grow the wrong way.

Many things about our bodies would not seem to us so filthy and obscene if we did not have the idea of nobility in our heads.

To read means to borrow; to create out of one s readings is paying off one's debts.

Once we know our weaknesses they cease to do us any harm.

The existence of guilty sense is soimportant in education and religion.

so wondrous wild, the whole might seemthe scenery of a fairy dream

Being hated isn't easy, you know. You just cannot falter meeting their expectations.

Liberty consists in the power of doing that which is permitted by the law.

Stopping me? That's impossible. There's not anything that can really stop me.

I can’t exactly describe how I feel but it’s not quite right. And it leaves me cold.

A thick head can do as much damage as a hard heart.

My riches consist not in the extent of my possessions but in the fewness of my wants.

Texas is the finest portion of the globe that has ever blessed my vision!

Virtue that transgresses is but patched with sin; and sin that amends is but patched with virtue.