The quote database

Friends are often chosen for similitude of manners, and therefore each palliates the other's failings, because they are his own.

To disappoint a friend is unpleasing; and he that forms expectations like yours, must be disappointed.

Energy of temperament, with a moderate degree of wisdom, will carry a man further than any amount of intellect without it.

A man must have the courage to be himself, and not the shadow or the echo of another.

Self-respect, originating in self-love, instigates the first step of improvement.

almost any man can do a great deal, if he will, by getting the utmost possible service out of the qualities that he actually possesses

When right, I shall often be thought wrong by those whose positions will not command a view of the whole ground.

If I felt that there is to be sole responsibility in the Executive for the America of tomorrow I should shrink from the burden.

If you want to change the world, measure a person by the size of their heart, not the size of their flippers.

Intimate friends are not fair witnesses to character, any more than professed enemies.

There are those who have gone, for want of this self-knowledge, strangely out of their way, and others who have never found it.

Friendships are frequently taken up on some sudden sympathy, and we see only as much as we please of one another's characters afterwards.

Surely it is hardly fitting that the ruler should be baser than the ruled.