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

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

The Siren waits thee, singing song for song.

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

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

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

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.

People, like nails, lose their effectiveness when they lose direction and begin to bend.

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

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

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

Everything that looks to the future elevates human nature.

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

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

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.