William Wycherley

Nothing goes by luck in composition. It allows of no tricks. The best you can write will be the best you are.

For every benefit you receive a tax is levied.

Knowledge and human power are synonymous.

The sons of Judah have to choose that God may again choose them. The divine principle of our race is action, choice, resolved memory.

It takes two to speak truth – one to speak, and another to hear.

Speak properly, and in as few words as you can, but always plainly; for the end of speech is not ostentation, but to be understood.

It requires a great deal of boldness and a great deal of caution to make a great fortune, and when you have it, it requires ten times as much skill to keep it.

Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each. Let them be your only diet, drink, and botanical medicines.

I have always considered it as treason against the great republic of human nature, to make any man’s virtues the means of deceiving him.

Few sinners are saved after the first twenty minutes of a sermon.

A man makes inferiors his superiors by heat; self-control is the rule.

It is a strange desire, to seek power and lose liberty, or to seek power over others and to lose power over a man’s self. The rising unto place is laborious, and by pains men come to greater pains, and it is sometimes base; and by indignities men come to dignities. The standing is slippery, and the regress is either a downfall or at least an eclipse, which is a melancholy thing.

I was born upon thy bank, river, my blood flows in thy stream, and thou meanderest forever. At the bottom of my dream.

Seek ye first the good things of the mind, and the rest will either be supplied or its loss will not be felt.

Nature has made up her mind that what cannot defend itself shall not be defended.