Never join with your friend when he abuses his horse or his wife, unless the one is about to be sold, the other to be buried.

To know a man, observe how he wins his object, rather than how he loses it; for when we fail, our pride supports us - when we succeed, it betrays us.

There is no cruelty so inexorable and unrelenting as that which proceeds from a bigoted and presumptuous supposition of doing service to God. The victim of the fanatical persecutor will find that the stronger the motives he can urge for mercy are, the weaker will be his chance for obtaining it, for the merit of his destruction will be supposed to rise in value in proportion as it is effected at the expense of every feeling both of justice and of humanity.

When millions applaud you seriously ask yourself what harm you have done; and when they disapprove you, what good.

The road to glory would cease to be arduous if it were trite and trodden; and great minds must be ready not only to take opportunities but to make them.

How small a portion of our life it is that we really enjoy! In youth we are looking forward to things that are to come; in old age we are looking backward to things that are gone past; in manhood, although we appear indeed to be more occupied in things that are present, yet even that is too often absorbed in vague determinations to be vastly happy on some future day when we have time.

Men spend their lives in anticipations,—in determining to be vastly happy at some period when they have time. But the present time has one advantage over every other—it is our own. Past opportunities are gone, future have not come. We may lay in a stock of pleasures, as we would lay in a stock of wine; but if we defer the tasting of them too long, we shall find that both are soured by age.