Self-development

Every artist was first an amateur

Everything I know I learned after I was thirty

To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom

By indignities men come to dignities

Many men owe the grandeur of their lives to their tremendous difficulties

Few women, I fear, have had such reason as I have to think the long sad years of youth were worth living for the sake of middle age

Study until twenty five, investigate until forty, profession until sixty, at which age I would have him retired on a double allowance

One must judge men not by their opinions, but by what their opinions have made of them

The duty of comedy is to correct men by amusing them

Men rise from one ambition to another: first, they seek to secure themselves against attack, and then they attack others.

No man, however strong, can serve ten years as schoolmaster, priest, or senator, and remain fit for anything else

Our real blessings often appear to us in the shape of pains, losses and disappointments; but let us have patience and we soon shall see them in their proper figures.

Men may change their climate, but they cannot change their nature. A man that goes out a fool cannot ride or sail himself into common sense

We are growing serious, and let me tell you, that's the very next step to being dull

One should take good care not to grow too wise for so great a pleasure of life as laughter

We don't understand life any better at forty than at twenty, but we know it and admit it

Time heals grief and quarrels, for we change and are no longer the same person.

First find the man in yourself if you will inspire manliness in others

Being born in a duck yard does not matter, if only you are hatched from a swan's egg

The man who never alters his opinions is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind