Category: Thought

To expect defeat is nine-tenths of defeat itself.

Truth never comes into the world but like a bastard, to the ignominy of him that brought her birth.

No man who knows aught, can be so stupid to deny that all men naturally were born free.

He who reigns within himself and rules passions, desires, and fears is more than a king.

He that studieth revenge keepeth his own wounds green, which otherwise would heal and do well.

The mind is its own place and in itself, can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.

I have discovered the most exciting, the most arduous literary form of all, the most difficult to master, the most pregnant in cur ious possibilities. I mean the advertisement…. It is far easier to write ten passably effective Sonnets, good enough to take in the not too inquiring critic, than one effective advertisement that will take in a few thousand of the uncritical buying public.

Every constitution…, and every law, naturally expires at the end of 19 years [a generation]. If it be enforced longer, it is an act of force, and not of right.

Books constitute capital. A library book lasts as long as a house, for hundreds of years. It is not, then, an article of mere consumption but fairly of capital, and often in the case of professional men, setting out in life, it is their only capital.

Always do right. This will gratify some people, and astonish the rest.