Books, like friends, should be few and well-chosen.

Every man who attacks my belief diminishes in some degree my confidence in it and therefore makes me uneasy, and I am angry with him who makes me uneasy.

If your determination is fixed I do not counsel you to despair. Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed, not by strength, but perseverance.

Nobody can write the life of a man, but those who have eat, and drunk, and lived in social intercourse with him.