Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
Charles Caleb Colton
True friendship is like sound health; the value of it is seldom known until it is lost.
We hate some persons because we do not know them; and will not know them because we hate them.
Friendship often ends in love; but love in friendship - never.
The study of mathematics, like the Nile, begins in minuteness but ends in magnificence.
Times of great calamity and confusion have been productive for the greatest minds. The purest ore is produced from the hottest furnace. The brightest thunder-bolt is elicited from the darkest storm.
Corruption is like a ball of snow, once it's set a rolling it must increase.
Liberty will not descend to a people; a people must raise themselves to liberty; it is a blessing that must be earned before it can be enjoyed.
The greatest friend of truth is Time, her greatest enemy is Prejudice, and her constant companion is Humility.
It is always safe to learn, even from our enemies; seldom safe to venture to instruct, even our friends.
Examinations are formidable even to the best prepared, for the greatest fool may ask more than the wisest man can answer.
Patience is the support of weakness; impatience the ruin of strength.
Those that are the loudest in their threats are the weakest in their actions.
If you cannot inspire a woman with love of you, fill her above the brim with love of herself; all that runs over will be yours.
Death is the liberator of him whom freedom cannot release, the physician of him whom medicine cannot cure, and the comforter of him whom time cannot console.
Power will intoxicate the best hearts, as wine the strongest heads. No man is wise enough, nor good enough to be trusted with unlimited power.
To dare to live alone is the rarest courage; since there are many who had rather meet their bitterest enemy in the field, than their own hearts in their closet.
When you have nothing to say, say nothing.
Books, like friends, should be few and well chosen. Like friends, too, we should return to them again and again for, like true friends, they will never fail us - never cease to instruct - never cloy.
If you would be known, and not know, vegetate in a village; if you would know, and not be known, live in a city.
Next to acquiring good friends, the best acquisition is that of good books.
The present time has one advantage over every other - it is our own.
Silence is foolish if we are wise, but wise if we are foolish.
There are some frauds so well conducted that it would be stupidity not to be deceived by them.
Life isn't like a book. Life isn't logical or sensible or orderly. Life is a mess most of the time. And theology must be lived in the midst of that mess.
Physical courage, which despises all danger, will make a man brave in one way; and moral courage, which despises all opinion, will make a man brave in another.
True contentment depends not upon what we have; a tub was large enough for Diogenes, but a world was too little for Alexander.
Men are born with two eyes, but with one tongue, in order that they should see twice as much as they say.
Friendship, of itself a holy tie, is made more sacred by adversity.
The firmest of friendships have been formed in mutual adversity, as iron is most strongly united by the fiercest flame.
He who studies books alone will know how things ought to be, and he who studies men will know how they are.
Avarice has ruined more souls than extravagance.
Did universal charity prevail, earth would be a heaven, and hell a fable.
Commerce flourishes by circumstances, precarious, transitory, contingent, almost as the winds and waves that bring it to our shores.
In life we shall find many men that are great, and some that are good, but very few men that are both great and good.
That writer does the most who gives his reader the most knowledge and takes from him the least time.
If we steal thoughts from the moderns, it will be cried down as plagiarism; if from the ancients, it will be cried up as erudition.
Marriage is a feast where the grace is sometimes better than the dinner.
No company is preferable to bad. We are more apt to catch the vices of others than virtues, as disease is far more contagious than health.
It is better to meet danger than to wait for it. He that is on a lee shore, and foresees a hurricane, stands out to sea and encounters a storm to avoid a shipwreck.
None are so fond of secrets as those who do not mean to keep them.
Those who visit foreign nations, but associate only with their own country-men, change their climate, but not their customs. They see new meridians, but the same men; and with heads as empty as their pockets, return home with traveled bodies, but untravelled minds.
Doubt is the vestibule through which all must pass before they can enter into the temple of wisdom.
Wealth after all is a relative thing since he that has little and wants less is richer than he that has much and wants more.
Our incomes should be like our shoes; if too small, they will gall and pinch us; but if too large, they will cause us to stumble and to trip.
The society of dead authors has this advantage over that of the living: they never flatter us to our faces, nor slander us behind our backs, nor intrude upon our privacy, nor quit their shelves until we take them down.
The two most precious things this side of the grave are our reputation and our life. But it is to be lamented that the most contemptible whisper may deprive us of the one, and the weakest weapon of the other.
Law and equity are two things which God has joined, but which man has put asunder.
Much may be done in those little shreds and patches of time which every day produces, and which most men throw away.
Many books require no thought from those who read them, and for a very simple reason; they made no such demand upon those who wrote them.
