Those who have suffered, who have known poverty or oppression, are generally the most prone to kindness. Perhaps it is well to endure some misery if only to learn this lesson.

Pessimism is carefully cultivated in some intellectual circles, as if it were a precious plant that the human race could not afford to lose.

We must rejoice when love is great, and pardon its excess, for love is the staff of life, and life without love is life in vain.

The test of education, apart from the accomplishments that secure places in an artificial system, should be this: Let the man be thrown naked on an unknown shore, and be forced to win his way amidst a new people. It may then be of little use to play cricket or to mishandle Tschaikowsky on a piano, but good physique, intelligence, and will power make their way infallibly.

The accumulation of facts, even if interesting in themselves, should not constitute the main part of education; these facts, whether they be of classical learning or knick-knacks of history, will be of little use unless the mind has been trained to see them in proper perspective.

Pessimism is a product of our civilization. It is not natural to the savage; he feels pain, or discomfort, and suffers from these palpable conditions, but when he recovers from wounds he forgets the torments, and when he is well fed he is joyous in the light of day.

Vanity is easily forgiven, for we are all vain, and even as we laugh at the weakness of others we feel that their vanity has touched the responding chord of our own.