Nothing is more terrible than activity without insight.

History is the essence of innumerable biographies.

If those gentlemen would let me alone I should be much obliged to them. I would say, as Shakespeare would say... ''Sweet Friend, for Jesus sake forbear.''

No sooner does a great man depart, and leave his character as public property, than a crowd of little men rushes towards it. There they are gathered together, blinking up to it with such vision as they have, scanning it from afar, hovering round it this way and that, each cunningly endeavoring, by all arts, to catch some reflex of it in the little mirror of himself.

A well-written life is almost as rare as a well-spent one.

All men, if they work not as in the great taskmaster's eye, will work wrong, and work unhappily for themselves and for you.

Show me the man you honor, and I will know what kind of a man you are. It shows me what your ideal of manhood is, and what kind of a man you long to be.

Permanence, perseverance and persistence in spite of all obstacle s, discouragement s, and impossibilities: It is this, that in all things distinguishes the strong soul from the weak.

Our main business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what clearly lies at hand.

The barrenest of all mortals is the sentimentalist.