... trouble of all kinds is voluble, and has plenty of words, but happiness was never written down.

... good and evil are so interwoven in life that every good, traced up far enough, is found to involve evil. This is the great mystery of life.

To forgive freely, is what we owe to our enemy; to forget not, is what we owe to ourselves.

The inevitable has always found me ready and hopeful.

When a man has calamity upon calamity the world generally concludes that he must be a very wicked man to deserve them. Perhaps the world is right; but it is also just possible that the world ... may be wrong.

the breed is more than the pasture. As you know, the cuckoo lays her eggs in any bird's nest; it may be hatched among blackbirds or robins or thrushes, but it is always a cuckoo. ... a man cannot deliver himself from his ancestors.

Don’t fail through defects of temper and over-sensitiveness at moments of trial. One of the great helps to success is to be cheerful; to go to work with a full sense of life; to be determined to put hindrances out of the way; to prevail over them and to get the mastery. Above all things else, be cheerful; there is no beatitude for the despairing.