The three great apostles of practical atheism, that make converts without persecuting, and retain them without preaching, are wealth, health and power.

In life we shall find many men that are great, and some that are good, but very few men that are both great and good.

We shall at all times chance upon men of recondite acquirements, but whose qualifications, from the incommunicative and inactive habits of their owners, are as utterly useless to others as though the possessors had them not.

It is good to act as if. It is even better to grow to the point where it is no longer an act.

The pride of ancestry is a superstructure of the most imposing height, but resting on the most flimsy foundation. It is ridiculous enough to observe the hauteur with which the old nobility look down on the new. The reason of this puzzled me a little, until I began to reflect that most titles are respectable only because they are old; if new, they would be despised, because all those who now admire the grandeur of the stream would see nothing but the impurity of the source.

Five thousand years have added no improvement to the hive of the bee, nor to the house of the beaver; but look at the habitations and the achievements of men!

Vice has more martyrs than virtue; and it often happens that men suffer more to be lost than to be saved.