Our chief want in life is somebody who shall make us do what we can.

I wish that life should not be cheap, but sacred. I wish the days to be as centuries, loaded, fragrant.

People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.

People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.

Shallow men believe in luck, believe in circumstances...Strong men believe in cause and effect.

The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.

We are born believing. A man bears beliefs as a tree bears apples.

The real and lasting victories are those of peace, and not of war.

The measure of a master is his success in bringing all men round to his opinion twenty years later.

I am not much an advocate for travelling, and I observe that men run away to other countries because they are not good in their own, and run back to their own because they pass for nothing in the new places. For the most part, only the light characters travel. Who are you that have no task to keep you at home? I have been quoted as saying captious things about travel; but I mean to do justice. .... He that does not fill a place at home, cannot abroad. He only goes there to hide his insignificance in a larger crowd. You do not think you will find anything there which you have not seen at home? The stuff of all countries is just the same. Do you suppose there is any country where they do not scald milk-pans, and swaddle the infants, and burn the brushwood, and broil the fish? What is true anywhere is true everywhere. And let him go where he will, he can only find so much beauty or worth as he carries.