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In a good bookroom you feel in some mysterious way that you are absorbing the wisdom contained in all the books through your skin, without even openin...more

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We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it - and stop there lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove...more

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The perfection of wisdom, and the end of true philosophy is to proportion our wants to our possessions, our ambitions to our capacities, we will then ...more

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It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.

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Be wise as a serpent and wary as a dove!

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Human nature is all alike.

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I am persuaded that a coldly-thought-out and independent verdict upon a fashion in clothes, or manners, or literature, or politics, or religion, or an...more

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Obscurity and a competence—that is the life that is best worth living.

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If Christ were here there is one thing he would not be—a Christian.

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I'll not go where there is any of that sort of thing going on, again. It's the sure way, and the only sure way;

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Behold, the fool saith, "Put not all thine eggs in the one basket" - which is but a matter of saying, "Scatter your money and your attention"; but the...more

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So I learned then, that gold in it's native state is but dull, unornamental stuff, and that only low-born metals excite the admiration of the ignorant...more

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Yes - en I's rich now, come to look at it. I owns myself, en I's wuth eight hund'd dollars. I wisht I had de money, I wouldn' want no mo'.

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The weakest of all weak things is a virtue which has not been tested in the fire.

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A proof once established is better left so.