Justice is rather the activity of truth, than a virtue in itself. Truth tells us what is due to others, and justice renders that due. Injustice is acting a lie.
By deafness one gains in one respect more than one loses one misses more nonsense than sense.
Plot, rules, nor even poetry, are not half so great beauties in tragedy or comedy as a just imitation of nature, of character, of the passions and their operations in diversified situations.
The whole secret of life is to be interested in one thing profoundly and in a thousand things well.
Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he isn't. A sense of humor was provided to console him for what he is.
Poetry is a beautiful way of spoiling prose, and the laborious art of exchanging plain sense for harmony.
I avoid talking before the youth of the age as I would dancing before them: for if one's tongue don't move in the steps of the day, and thinks to please by its old graces, it is only an object of ridicule.
Alexander at the head of the world never tasted the true pleasure that boys of his own age have enjoyed at the head of a school.