“The true'to put it very briefly, is only the expedient in the way of our thinking, just as 'the right' is only the expedient in the way of our behaving.”

“We ought, all of us, to realize each other in this intense, pathetic, and important way. If you say that this is absurd, and that we cannot be in love with everyone at once, I merely point out to you that, as a matter of fact, certain persons do exist with an enormous capacity for friendship and for taking delight in other people's lives; and that such persons know more of truth than if their hearts were not so big.”

“There can be no final truth in ethics any more than in physics, until the last man has had his experience and said his say.”

“The total mental efficiency of a man is the resultant of the working together of all his faculties. He is too complex a being for any one of them to have the casting vote. If any one of them do have the casting vote, it is more likely to be the strength of his desire and passion, the strength of the interest he takes in what is proposed. Concentration, memory, reasoning power, inventiveness, excellence of the senses, all are subsidiary to this.”

“I don't see how an epigram, being a bolt from the blue, with no introduction or cue, ever gets itself writ.”

“This liberty is all that I request.”

“...and then, in dreaming, / The clouds methought would open and show riches / Ready to drop upon me, that when I waked / I cried to dream again.”

“Now, by the world, it is a lusty wench; I love her ten times more than e'er I did: O, how I long to have some chat with her!”

“I have bought golden opinions from all sorts of people.”

“Perseverance... keeps honor bright: to have done, is to hang quite out of fashion, like a rusty nail in monumental mockery.”

“...lest too light winning make the prize light.”

“If a man fasten his attention on a single aspect of truth and apply himself to that alone for a long time, the truth becomes distorted and not itself but falsehood.”

“The objection to conforming to usages that have become dead to you is, that it scatters your force.”

“The one prudence in life is concentration; the one evil is dissipation: and it makes no difference whether our dissipations are coarse or fine; property and its cares, friends and a social habit, or politics, or music, or feasting. Everything is good which takes away one plaything and delusion more, and drives us home to add one stroke of faithful work.”

“And fearless minds climb soonest unto crowns.”

“Some falls the means are happier to rise.”

“Many strokes, though with a little axe, hew down and fell the hardest-timber'd oak.”

“My will enkindled by mine eyes and ears, Two traded pilots 'twixt the dangerous shores Of will and judgment.”

“The let-alone lies not in your good will.”

“I'll forbear; And am fallen out with my more headier will To take the indisposed and sickly fit For the sound man.”