We own almost all our knowledge not to those who have agreed but to those who have differed.
If you would be known, and not know, vegetate in a village; if you would know, and not be known, live in a city.
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.
Moderation is the inseparable companion of wisdom, but with it genius has not even a nodding acquaintance.
When millions applaud you seriously ask yourself what harm you have done; and when they disapprove you, what good.
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.
There is nothing more imprudent than excessive prudence.
Mystery is not profoundness.
Bigotry murders religion to frighten fools with her ghost.
Contemporaries appreciate the person rather than their merit, posterity will regard the merit rather than the person.
In religion as in politics it so happens that we have less charity for those who believe half our creed, than for those who deny the whole of it.
Many speak the truth when they say that they despise riches, but they mean the riches possessed by others.
The drafts which true genius draws upon posterity, although they may not always be honored so soon as they are due, are sure to be paid with compound interest in the end.
The Grecian’s maxim would indeed be a sweeping clause in Literature; it would reduce many a giant to a pygmy; many a speech to a sentence; and many a folio to a primer.
Those that are the loudest in their threats are the weakest in their actions.
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.
Commerce flourishes by circumstances, precarious, transitory, contingent, almost as the winds and waves that bring it to our shores.
Doubt is the vestibule through which all must pass before they can enter into the temple of wisdom.
There are three modes of bearing the ills of life, by indifference, by philosophy, and by religion.
That writer does the most who gives his reader the most knowledge and takes from him the least time.