"The educated differ from the uneducated as much as the living from the dead."
". . . if the consequences are the same it is always better to assume the more limited antecedent, since in things of nature the limited, as being better, is sure to be found, wherever possible, rather than the unlimited."
"Wit is educated insolence."
"The whole is more than the sum of the parts."
"Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities."
"How many a dispute could have been deflated into a single paragraph if the disputants had dared to define their terms."
"If liberty and equality, as is thought by some, are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in the government to the utmost."
"It is easy to perform a good action, but not easy to acquire a settled habit of performing such actions."
"Nature does nothing uselessly."
"Wishing to be friends is quick work, but friendship is slow-ripening fruit."
"The energy of the mind is the essence of life."
"[Young people] have exalted notions, because they have not been humbled by life or learned its necessary limitations; moreover, their hopeful disposition makes them think themselves equal to great things - and that means having exalted notions. They would always rather do noble deeds than useful ones: Their lives are regulated more by moral feeling than by reasoning - all their mistakes are in the direction of doing things excessively and vehemently. They overdo everything - they love too much, hate too much, and the same with everything else."
"No great genius is without an admixture of madness."
"We are what we repeatedly do."
"Happiness depends upon ourselves."
"Even when laws have been written down, they ought not always to remain unaltered."
"Accordingly, the poet should prefer probable impossibilities to improbable possibilities."
"A common danger unites even the bitterst enemies."
"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then is not an act, but a habit"
"Humor is the only test of gravity, and gravity of humor; for a subject which will not bear raillery is suspicious, and a jest which will not bear serious examination is false wit."
"What is justice? To give every man his own."
"The beauty of the soul shines out when a man bears with composure one heavy mischance after another, not because he does not feel them, but because he is a man of high and heroic temper."
"The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousandfold."
"Man is a goal seeking animal. His life only has meaning if he is reaching out and striving for his goals."
"A democracy is a government in the hands of men of low birth, no property, and vulgar employments."