People who have given us their complete confidence believe that they have a right to ours. The inference is false, a gift confers no rights.
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Constancy has nothing virtuous in itself, independently of the pleasure it confers, and partakes of the temporizing spirit of vice in proportion as it endures tamely moral defects of magnitude in the object of its indiscreet choice.
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What is there that confers the noblest delight? What is that which swells a man's breast with pride above that which any other experience can bring to him? Discovery! To know that you are walking where none others have walked; that you are beholding what human eye has not seen before; that you are breathing a virgin atmosphere. To give birth to an idea, to discover a great thought -- an intellectual nugget, right under the dust of a field that many a brain-plough had gone over before. To find a new planet, to invent a new hinge, to find a way to make the lightning carry your messages. To be the first -- that is the idea.
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He who confers a favor should at once forget it, if he is not to show a sordid ungenerous spirit. To remind a man of a kindness conferred and to talk of it, is little different from reproach.
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Common experience is the gold reserve which confers an exchange value on the currency which words are; without this reserve of shared experiences, all our pronouncements are checks drawn on insufficient funds.
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He who lives only to benefit himself confers on the world a benefit when he dies.
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Money is the most egalitarian force in society. It confers power on whoever holds it.
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You traverse the world in search of happiness, which is within the reach of every man. A contented mind confers it on all.
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He is great who confers the most benefits.
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Of all the benefits which virtue confers on us, the contempt of death is one of the greatest.
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