The only kind office performed for us by our friends of which we never complain is our funeral; and the only thing which we most want, happens to be the only thing we never purchase--our coffin.

True friendship is like sound health; the value of it is seldom known until it is lost.

Nothing more completely baffles one who is full of trick and duplicity himself, than straight forward and simple integrity in another.

The soundest argument will produce no more conviction in an empty head than the most superficial declamation; as a feather and a guinea fall with equal velocity in a vacuum.

The art of declamation has been sinking in value from the moment that speakers were foolish enough to publish, and hearers wise enough to read.

None are so fond of secrets as those who do not mean to keep them; such persons covet secrets as a spendthrift covets money, for the purpose of circulation.

Much may be done in those little shreds and patches of time which every day produces, and which most men throw away.

Let those who would affect singularity with success first determine to be very virtuous, and they will be sure to be very singular.

Atheism is a system which can communicate neither warmth nor illumination, except from those fagots which your mistaken zeal has lighted up for its destruction.

Deliberate with caution, but act with decision and yield with graciousness, or oppose with firmness.

The study of mathematics, like the Nile, begins in minuteness but ends in magnificence.

Perhaps the whole of life is a continuousinterconnecting of miracle, but we don't always realise it.

The visionary disciplines himself to see the world always as if he had only just seen it for the first time.

Success doesn't mean the absence of failures; it means the attainment of ultimate objectives.

I don't want to sound arrogant, but the defense might shut me down on one or two out of five plays, but I'll make them pay eventually.

In the ten years I was president of the Teamsters, I had raised the membership from eight hundred thousand to more than 2 million and made it the largest single labor union the world.

It’s only with great vulgarity that you can achieve real refinement, only out of bawdry that you can get tenderness.

As desire recedes, the world becomes clear, pale, and empty.

Teaching is the ability to inspire learning.

We have power not just with our voices, but we have economic power in what we do for a living, too.

In the last analysis, productivity of labour is the most important, the principal thing for the victory of the new social system.