In argument, truth always prevails finally; in politics, falsehood always.

The flame of anger, bright and brief, sharpens the barb of love.

No thoroughly occupied person was ever found really miserable.

There is no easy path leading out of life, and few easy ones that lie within it.

We are no longer happy so soon as we wish to be happier.

Study is the bane of childhood, the oil of youth, the indulgence of adulthood, and a restorative in old age.

I strove with none, for none was worth my strife.Nature I loved and, next to Nature, Art:I warm’d both hands before the fire of life;It sinks, and I am ready to depart.

There is delight in singing, though none hear beside the singer.

Delay in justice is injustice.

A man’s vanity tells him what is honor, a man’s conscience what is justice.

No truer word, save God’s, was ever spoken,Than that the largest heart is soonest broken.

We talk on principal, but act on motivation.

Ambition has but one reward for all: A little power, a little transient fame; A grave to rest in, and a fading name!

The writing of the wise are the only riches our posterity cannot squander.

Many laws as certainly make bad men, as bad men make many laws.

Great men lose somewhat of their greatness by being near us; ordinary men gain much.

We cannot be contented because we are happy, and we cannot be happy because we are contented.

We think that we suffer from ingratitude, while in reality we suffer from self-love.

What is reading but silent conversation.

Prose on certain occasions can bear a great deal of poetry; on the other hand, poetry sinks and swoons under a moderate weight of prose.

Men, like nails, lose their usefulness when they lose their direction and begin to bend.

No ashes are lighter than those of incense, and few things burn out sooner.

Cats, like men, are flatterers.

There is nothing on earth divine except humanity.

Even the weakest disputant is made so conceited by what he calls religion, as to think himself wiser than the wisest who think differently from him.

The Siren waits thee, singing song for song.

When a cat flatters … he is not insincere: you may safely take it for real kindness.

Goodness does not more certainly make men happy than happiness makes them good.

Great men always pay deference to greater.

The wise become as the unwise in the enchanted chambers of Power, whose lamps make every face the same colour.

Cats ask plainly for what they want.

An ingenuous mind feels in unmerited praise the bitterest reproof.

My thoughts are my company; I can bring them together, select them, detain them, dismiss them.

Ambition is but avarice on stilts, and masked.

Nothing is pleasanter to me than exploring in a library.

Consult duty not events.

We often fancy that we suffer from ingratitude, while in reality we suffer from self-love.

I strove with none; for none was worth my strife.

Music is God’s gift to man, the only art of Heaven given to earth, the only art of earth we take to Heaven.

Every sect is a moral check on its neighbour. Competition is as wholesome in religion as in commerce.

Truth, like the juice of the poppy, in small quantities, calms men; in larger, heats and irritates them, and is attended by fatal consequences in excess.