A weak mind sinks under prosperity, as well as under adversity.

What a pity it is that there are so many words! Whenever one wants to say anything, three or four ways of saying it run into one's head together; and one can't tell which to choose. It is as troublesome and puzzling as choosing a ribbon ... or a husband.

When you doubt between two words, choose the plainest, the commonest, the most idiomatic. Eschew fine words as you would rouge: love simple ones, as you would native roses on your cheeks.

[In] public speaking ... there is a strong temptation to make up for emptiness by sound, to give commonplace observations an uncommon look by swelling them out with bloated diction--to tack a string of conventional phrases to the tail of every proposition, in the hope that this will enable it to fly--and to take care that the buckram thoughts, in whatever respects they may resemble Falstaff's men, shall at least have plenty of buckram to strut in.

A language has very little that is arbitrary in it, very little betokening the conscious power and action of man. It owes its origin, not to the thoughts and the will of individuals, but to an instinct actuating a whole people: it expresses what is common to them all: it has sprung out of their universal wants, and lives in their hearts. But after a while in intellectual aristocracy come forward, and frame a new language of their own. The princes and lords of thought shoot forth their winged words into regions beyond the scan of the people. They require a gold coinage, in addition to the common currency.