Imitation is the highest form of flattery.
Liberty will not descend to a people; a people must raise themselves to liberty; it is a blessing that must be earned before it can be enjoyed.
Pure truth, like pure gold, has been found unfit for circulation because men have discovered that it is far more convenient to adulterate the truth than to refine themselves.
Nothing more completely baffles one who is full of trick and duplicity himself, than straight forward and simple integrity in another.
When you have nothing to say, say nothing.
Time is the most undefinable yet paradoxical of things; the past is gone, the future is not come, and the present becomes the past, even while we attempt to define it.
The French have a saying that whatever excellence a man may exhibit in a public station he is very apt to be ridiculous in a private one.
Those that are the loudest in their threats are the weakest in their actions.
Men's arguments often prove nothing but their wishes.
In life we shall find many men that are great, and some that are good, but very few men that are both great and good.
He that studies books alone, will know how things ought to be; and he that studies men, will know how things are.
For one man who sincerely pities our misfortunes, there are a thousand who sincerely hate our success.
Bed is a bundle of paradoxes: we go to it with reluctance, yet we quit it with regret.
Ignorance is a blank sheet, on which we may write; but error is a scribbled one, on which we must first erase.
Eloquence is the language of nature, and cannot be learned in the schools; but rhetoric is the creature of art, which he who feels least will most excel in.
Silence is less injurious than a weak reply.
Fortune, like other females, prefers a lover to a master, and submits with impatience to control; but he that wooes her with opportunity and importunity will seldom court her in vain.
The worst thing that can be said of the most powerful is that they can take your life; but the same can be said of the most weak.
There are three kinds of praise, that which we yield, that which we lend, and that which we pay. We yield it to the powerful from fear, we lend it to the weak from interest, and we pay it to the deserving from gratitude.
Next to acquiring good friends, the best acquisition is that of good books.
The family is the most basic unit of government. As the first community to which a person is attached and the first authority under which a person learns to live, the family establishes society's most basic values.
We are sure to be losers when we quarrel with ourselves; it is civil war.
It is best, if possible, to deceive no one; for he that ... begins by deceiving others, will end ... by deceiving himself.
That writer does the most who gives his reader the most knowledge and takes from him the least time.
The man of pleasure, by a vain attempt to be more happy than any man can be, is often more miserable than most men are.
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