“What is there that confers the noblest delight? What is that which swells a man's breast with pride above that which any other experience can bring to him? Discovery!”

“I have achieved my seventy years in the usual way: by sticking strictly to a scheme of life which would kill anybody else... I will offer here, as a sound maxim, this: That we can't reach old age by another man's road.”

“All publishers are Columbuses. The successful author is their America. The reflection that they-like Columbus-didn't discover what they expected to discover, and didn't discover what they started out to discover, doesn't trouble them. All they remember is that they discovered America; they forget that they started out to discover some patch or corner of India.”

“Ah, if he could only die temporarily!”

“My own luck has been curious all my literary life; I never could tell a lie that anyone would doubt, nor a truth that anybody would believe.”

“A man is usually more careful of his money than he is of his principles.”

“Some men change their party for the sake of their principles; others their principles for the sake of their party”

“Our inheritance of well-founded, slowly conceived codes of honor, morals and manners, the passionate convictions which so many hundreds of millions share together of the principles of freedom and justice, are far more precious to us than anything which scientific discoveries could bestow.”

“They that have voice of lions and act of hares,--are they not monsters?”

“That which in mean men we entitle patience is pale cold cowardice in noble breasts.”

“O faithless coward! O dishonest wretch!Wilt thou be made a man out of my vice?”

“I that please some, try all, both joy and terrorOf good and bad, that makes and unfolds error.”

“Do all men kill the things they do not love?”

“If the masses can love without knowing why, they also hate without much foundation.”

“To do a great right do a little wrong.”

“Self-love, my liege, is not so vile a sin, as self-neglecting.”

“Love all, trust a few, Do wrong to none: be able for thine enemy Rather in power than use; and keep thy friend Under thy own life's key: be check'd for silence, But never tax'd for speech.”

“Like oneWho having into truth, by telling of it,Made such a sinner of his memory,To credit his own lie.”

“We do what we must, and call it by the best names we can, and would fain have the praise of having intended the result which ensues.”

“We do what we can, and then make a theory to prove our performance the best.”