Everyone has a fair turn to be as great as he pleases

People's opinions of themselves are commonly legible in their countenances.

Envy [...], like a cold poison, [...] benumbs and stupefies. And thus conscious as it were of its own impotence, it folds its arms in despair, and sits cursing in a corner.

A man may as well expect to grow stronger by always eating, as wiser by always reading. Too much over-charges nature, and turns more into disease than nourishment. 'Tis thought and digestion which makes books serviceable, and gives health …

By reading a man does as it were antedate his life, and makes himself contemporary with the ages past. And this way of running up beyond one's nativity is much better than Plato's pre-existence, because here a man knows something of the …

This is brave Bear-Garden language!

To believe a business impossible is the way to make it so. How many feasible projects have miscarried by despondency, and been strangled in the birth by a cowardly imagination?