Those people who are always improving never become great. Greatness is an eminence, the ascent to which is steep and lofty, and which a man must seize on at once by natural boldness and vigor, and not by patient, wary steps.

A nickname is the hardest stone that the devil can throw at a man.

No really great man ever thought himself so.

To be wiser than other men is to be honester than they; and strength of mind is only courage to see and speak the truth.

There is no one thoroughly despicable. We cannot descend much lower than an idiot; and an idiot has some advantages over a wise man.

The way to procure insults is to submit to them. A man meets with no more respect than he exacts.

No man is truly great who is great only in his lifetime. The test of greatness is the page of history.

No man would, I think, exchange his existence with any other man, however fortunate. We had as lief not be, as not be ourselves.

A nickname is the heaviest stone that the devil can throw at a man. It is a bugbear to the imagination, and, though we do not believe in it, it still haunts our apprehensions.