To be always thinking about your manners is not the way to make them good; the very perfection of manners is not to think about yourself.

In our judgment of human transactions, the law of optics is reversed; we see the most indistinctly the objects which are close around us.

He only is exempt from failures who makes no efforts.

Men are like sheep, of which a flock is more easily driven than a single one.

Manners are one of the greatest engines of influence ever given to man.

A man who gives his children habits of industry provides for them better than by giving them fortune.

There is a soul of truth in error; there is a soul of good in evil.

To know your ruling passion, examine your castles in the air.

To be always thinking about your manners is not the way to make them good; the very perfection of manners is not to think about yourself.

Honesty is the best policy; but he who is governed by that maxim is not an honest man.

Unless people can be kept in the dark, it is best for those who love the truth to give them the full light.

It is folly to expect men to do all that they may reasonably be expected to do.

As one may bring himself to believe almost anything he is inclined to believe, it makes all the difference whether we begin or end with the inquiry, 'What is truth?'

The happiest lot for a man, as far as birth is concerned, is that it should be such as to give him but little occasion to think much about it.

Preach not because you have to say something, but because you have something to say.

Lose an hour in the morning, and you will spend all day looking for it.

Curiosity is as much the parent of attention, as attention is of memory.

Everyone wishes to have truth on his side, but not everyone wishes to be on the side of truth.

Happiness is no laughing matter.

A man is called selfish not for pursuing his own good, but for neglecting his neighbor's.

It is generally true that all that is required to make men unmindful of what they owe God for any blessing is that they should receive that blessing often and regularly.

All men wish to have truth on their side; but few to be on the side of truth.

It is the neglect of timely repair that makes rebuilding necessary.

To follow imperfect, uncertain, or corrupted traditions, in order to avoid erring in our own judgment, is but to exchange one danger for another.

Lose an hour in the morning, and you will be all day hunting for it.

Lose an hour in the morning, and you will be all day hunting for it.

To know your ruling passion examine your castles in the air.

Even supposing there were some spiritual advantage in celibacy it ought to be completely voluntary

Curiosity is as much the parent of attention as attention is of memory.

In our judgment of human transactions, the law of optics is reversed, we see most dimly the objects which are close around us.

Of metaphors, those generally conduce most to energy or vivacity of style which illustrate an intellectual by a sensible object.

Persecution is not wrong because it is cruel; but it is cruel because it is wrong.

The relief that is afforded to mere want, as want, tends to increase that want.

It is the neglect of timely repair that makes rebuilding necessary.

It is folly to shiver over last year's snow.

Superstition is not, as has been defined, an excess of religious feeling, but a misdirection of it, an exhausting of it on vanities of man's devising.

No advance in wealth, no softening of manners, no reform or revolution has ever brought human equality a millimeter nearer.

Indeed, Miss Manners has come to believe that the basic political division in this country is not between liberals and conservatives but between those who believe that they should have a say in the love lives of strangers and those who do not.

Be simple in words, manners, and gestures. Amuse as well as instruct. If you can make a man laugh, you can make him think and make him like and believe you.

You come before me this morning with clean hands and clean collars. I want you to have clean tongues, clean manners, clean morals and clean characters.

To the real artist in humanity, what are called bad manners are often the most picturesque and significant of all.

An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life.

Equality is the public recognition, effectively expressed in institutions and manners, of the principle that an equal degree of attention is due to the needs of all human beings.

Nothing is so great an example of bad manners as flattery. If you flatter all the company, you please none; If you flatter only one or two, you offend the rest.

Manners are love in a cool climate.

Friends and good manners will carry you where money won't go.

The progress of the American Revolution has been so rapid and such the alteration of manners, the blending of characters, and the new train of ideas that almost universally prevail, that the principles which animated to the noblest exertions have been nearly annihilated.

Simplicity in character, in manners, in style; in all things the supreme excellence is simplicity.

I differ materially from Capt. Lewis, in my account of the numbers, manners, and morals of the Sioux.