"Prudence keeps life safe, but it does not often make it happy."

"Their learning is like bread in a besieged town: every man gets a little, but no man gets a full meal."

"The traveler that resolutely follows a rough and winding path will sooner reach the end of his journey than he that is always changing his direction, and wastes the hour of daylight in looking for smoother ground and shorter passages."

"A Judge may be a farmer; but he is not to geld his own pigs. A Judge may play a little at cards for his own amusement; but he is not to play at marbles, or chuck farthing in the Piazza."

"What provokes your risibility, Sir? Have I said anything that you understand? Then I ask pardon of the rest of the company."

"I would be loath to speak ill of any person who I do not know deserves it, but I am afraid he is an attorney."

"Lawyers know life practically. A bookish man should always have them to converse with."

"Difficult do you call it, Sir? I wish it were impossible."

"Don't think of retiring from the world until the world will be sorry that you retire. I hate a fellow whom pride or cowardice or laziness drive into a corner, and who does nothing when he is there but sit and growl. Let him come out as I do, and bark."

"One cause, which is not always observed, of the insufficiency of riches, is that they very seldom make their owner rich."

"It is wonderful to think how men of very large estates not only spend their yearly income, but are often actually in want of money. It is clear, they have not value for what they spend."

"It is better to live rich, than to die rich."

"What is read twice is usually remembered more than what is once written."

"The true art of memory is the art of attention."

"Worth seeing? Yes; but not worth going to see."

"In traveling, a man must carry knowledge with him, if he would bring home knowledge."

"The use of traveling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are."

"As the Spanish proverb says, ''He who would bring home the wealth of the Indies, must carry the wealth of the Indies with him.'' So it is in travelling; a man must carry knowledge with him, if he would bring home knowledge."

"He that travels in theory has no inconveniences; he has shade and sunshine at his disposal, and wherever he alights finds tables of plenty and looks of gaiety. These ideas are indulged till the day of departure arrives, the chaise is called, and the progress of happiness begins. A few miles teach him the fallacies of imagination. The road is dusty, the air is sultry, the horses are sluggish. He longs for the time of dinner that he may eat and rest. The inn is crowded, his orders are neglected, and nothing remains but that he devour in haste what the cook has spoiled, and drive on in quest of better entertainment. He finds at night a more commodious house, but the best is always worse than he expected."

"He is no wise man who will quit a certainty for an uncertainty."

"Sir, I have found you an argument; but I am not obliged to find you an understanding."

"I am always sorry when any language is lost, because languages are the pedigrees of nations."

"Language is only the instrument of science, and words are but the signs of ideas."

"Language is the dress of thought."

"I love to lose myself in other men's minds.... Books think for me."

"A book reads the better which is our own, and has been so long known to us, that we know the topography of its blots, and dog's ears, and can trace the dirt in it to having read it at tea with buttered muffins."

"The greatest pleasure I know is to do a good action by stealth, and to have it found out by accident."

"Don't introduce me to that man! I want to go on hating him, and I can't hate a man whom I know."

"Think what you would have been now, if instead of being fed with tales and old wives' fables in childhood, you had been crammed with geography and natural history!"

"My theory is to enjoy life, but the practice is against it."

"I love to lose myself in other men's minds. When I am not walking, I am reading, I cannot sit and think. Books think for me"

"Not many sounds in life, and I include all urban and all rural sounds, exceed in interest a knock at the door."

"Newspapers always excite curiosity. No one ever lays one down without a feeling of disappointment."

"Cultivate simplicity or rather should I say banish elaborateness, for simplicity springs spontaneous from the heart."

"He is a benefactor of mankind who contracts the great rules of life into short sentences, that may be easily impressed on the memory, and so recur habitually to the mind."

"He that embarks on the voyage of life will always wish to advance rather by the impulse of the wind than the strokes of the oar; and many fold in their passage; while they lie waiting for the gale.''"

"The blaze of reputation cannot be blown out, but it often dies in the socket; a very few names may be considered as perpetual lamps that shine unconsumed."

"Except during the nine months before he draws his first breath, no man manages his affairs as well as a tree. We are inclined to believe those whom we do not know because they have never deceived us."

"This mournful truth is ev'rywhere confess'd,- Slow rises worth by poverty depress'd"

"Power is not sufficient evidence of truth"

"The wise man applauds he who he thinks most virtuous; the rest of the world applauds the wealthy."

"Virtue is too often merely local."

"Wickedness is always easier than virtue, for it takes a short cut to everything."

"The longer we live the more we think and the higher the value we put on friendship and tenderness towards parents and friends."

"In the decline of life shame and grief are of short duration; whether it be that we bear easily what we have borne long; or that, finding ourselves in age less regarded, we less regard others; or, that we look with slight regard upon afflictions to w"

"While grief is fresh, every attempt to divert only irritates. You must wait till it be digested, and then amusement will dissipate the remains of it."

"Where grief is fresh, any attempt to divert it only irritates"

"Excellence in any department can be attained only by the labor of a lifetime; it is not to be purchased at a lesser price."

"Labor, if it were not necessary for existence, would be indispensable for the happiness of man."

"Questioning is not the mode of conversation among gentlemen."