Our main business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance but to do what lies clearly at hand.
All men, if they work not as in the great taskmaster's eye, will work wrong, and work unhappily for themselves and for you.
Popular opinion is the greatest lie in the world.
The best effect of any book is that it excites the reader to self-activity.
That there should one Man die ignorant who had capacity for Knowledge, this I call a tragedy.
Enjoy things which are pleasant; that is not the evil: it is the reducing of our moral self to slavery by them that is.
Speech is human, silence is divine, yet also brutish and dead: therefore we must learn both arts.
A well-written life is almost as rare as a well-spent one.
In the long-run every Government is the exact symbol of its People, with their wisdom and unwisdom; we have to say, Like People like Government.
Under all speech that is good for anything there lies a silence that is better. Silence is deep as eternity; speech is as shallow as time.