Constant success shows us but one side of the world. For as it surrounds us with friends who will tell us only our merits, so it silences those enemies from whom alone we can learn our defects.

True friendship is like sound health; the value of it is seldom known until it is lost.

Nothing more completely baffles one who is full of trick and duplicity himself, than straight forward and simple integrity in another.

The soundest argument will produce no more conviction in an empty head than the most superficial declamation; as a feather and a guinea fall with equal velocity in a vacuum.

The art of declamation has been sinking in value from the moment that speakers were foolish enough to publish, and hearers wise enough to read.

None are so fond of secrets as those who do not mean to keep them; such persons covet secrets as a spendthrift covets money, for the purpose of circulation.

Much may be done in those little shreds and patches of time which every day produces, and which most men throw away.

Let those who would affect singularity with success first determine to be very virtuous, and they will be sure to be very singular.

Atheism is a system which can communicate neither warmth nor illumination, except from those fagots which your mistaken zeal has lighted up for its destruction.

Deliberate with caution, but act with decision and yield with graciousness, or oppose with firmness.

The study of mathematics, like the Nile, begins in minuteness but ends in magnificence.

Modern man is a prisoner who thinks he is free because he refrains from touching thewalls of his dungeon.

Master the courage to conquer any mountain

Once you finally cease all judgements you will also be freed from the need to forgive.

At the end of the day, I think the only way to do the kind of job a writer does is push everything aside and just ultimately sit down and do the work.

True champions aren't always the ones that win, but those with the most guts.

When actors give their input, it can be very ego-driven, and directors are scared of that.

Most of us are animal lovers. We insist that we love all animals equally - the hamster, the weasel, and the zebra - but if pressed, we will admit to being either a cat person or a dog person.

However, there are those who deserve to die but who have not yet encountered the means to do so—we help them on their way.

I don't think any other emotion is the equivalent of laughter. So I do whatever I can to laugh all the time and to hide my pain.

To doubt has more of faith ... than that blank negation of all such thoughts and feelings which is the lot of the herd of church-and-meeting trotters.