The world would be happier if men had the same capacity to be silent that they have to speak.

Are we happy that our grandchildren may never seen an elephant except in a picture book?

Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.

The highest forms of understanding we can achieve are laughter and human compassion.

The capacity to suffer varies more than anything that I have observed in human nature.

We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

Take away paradox from the thinker and you have a professor.

If you want to know what a man's like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals.

A man's first care should be to avoid the reproaches of his own heart.

He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.

A wise man can play the part of a clown, but a clown can't play the part of a wise man.

The first time someone shows you who they are, believe them.

Human history is in essence a history of ideas.

People seldom do what they believe in. They do what is convenient, then repent.

I measure the progress of a community by the degree of progress which women have achieved.

The greatest sweetener of human life is Friendship. To raise this to the highest pitch of enjoyment, is a secret which but few discover.

People fall forward to success.

Sometimes our light goes out, but is blown again into instant flame by an encounter with another human being.

It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.

No mortal can keep a secret. If the lips are silent, he chatters with his fingertips; betrayal oozes out of him at every pore.

Human nature is not totally fixed, but on any realistic scale, evolutionary processes are much too slow to affect it.