My wife is as handsome as when she was a girl, and I...fell in love with her; and what is more, I have never fallen out.

Important principles may, and must, be inflexible.

Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.

You may have a wen or a cancer upon your person and not be able to cut it out lest you bleed to death; but surely it is no way tocure it, to engraft it and spread it over your whole body.

When I came of age I did not know much. Still somehow, I could read, write, and cipher to the Rule of Three.... The little advanceI now have upon this store of education, I have picked up from time to time under the pressure of necessity.

The struggle of today is not altogether for today - it is for a vast future also.

Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.