While civilization has been improving our houses, it has not equally improved the men who are to inhabit them. It has created palaces, but it was not so easy to create noblemen and kings.
It is an interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their clothes.
Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends... Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts.
We know but a few men, a great many coats and breeches.
There is always a present and extant life, be it better or worse, which all combine to uphold.
Most of the luxuries and many of the so-called comforts of life are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.
Men have a respect for scholarship and learning greatly out of proportion to the use they commonly serve.
Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed, and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.
If misery loves company, misery has company enough.
If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment.
Nothing goes by luck in composition. It allows of no tricks. The best you can write will be the best you are.
How many things there are concerning which we might well deliberate whether we had better know them.
Faith never makes a confession.
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.
I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.
The lawyer's truth is not Truth, but consistency or a consistent expediency.
There is one consolation in being sick; and that is the possibility that you may recover to a better state than you were ever in before.
If a man constantly aspires is he not elevated?
Nature and human life are as various as our several constitutions. Who shall say what prospect life offers to another?
There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living.
