Rachel Danson

Sincerity is the luxury allowed, like diadems and authority, only to the highest rank. Every man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins.

We must hold a man amenable to reason for the choice of his daily craft or profession. It is not an excuse any longer for his deeds that they are the custom of his trade. What business has he with an evil trade?

There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know we don’t know.

It isn’t making mistakes that’s critical; it’s correcting them and getting on with the principal task.

Lord save us all from a hope tree that has lost the faculty of putting out blossoms.

Neither irony or sarcasm is argument.

Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.

I know that we will be the sufferers if we let great wrongs occur without exerting ourselves to correct them.

Old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read.

The great advantages of simulation and dissimulation are three. First to lay asleep opposition and to surprise. For where a man’s intentions are published, it is an alarum to call up all that are against them. The second is to reserve a man’s self a fair retreat: for if a man engage himself, by a manifest declaration, he must go through, or take a fall. The third is, the better to discover the mind of another. For to him that opens himself, men will hardly show themselves adverse; but will fair let him go on, and turn their freedom of speech to freedom of thought.

An election is coming. Universal peace is declared, and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry.

Think with your whole body.

In all pointed sentences, some degree of accuracy must be sacrificed to conciseness.

The greatest glory in living lies in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.

To every disadvantage there is a corresponding advantage.