The lively and mercurial are as open books, with the leaves turned down at the notable passages. Their souls sit at the windows of their eyes, seeing and to be seen.

Honesty is not only "the first step toward greatness," - it is greatness itself.

God, we are told, looked upon the world after he had created it and pronounced it good; but ascetic pietists, in their wisdom, cast their eyes over it, and substantially pronounce it a dead failure, a miserable production, a poor concern.

Men, like musical instruments, seem made to be played upon.

Contentment is not happiness. An oyster may be contented. Happiness is compounded of richer elements.

God has created too few unmixed evils to warrant the belief that death is one of them. In all things else in nature, goodness so abounds that we are authorized to infer that it does not stop even at the grave. It is only that her footprints have become invisible.

Heaven lent you a soul, Earth will lend a grave.