Great warriors, like great earthquakes, are principally remembered for the mischief they have done.

A profusion of fancies and quotations is out of place in a love-letter. True feeling is always direct, and never deviates into by-ways to cull flowers of rhetoric.

The grandest of all laws is the law of progressive development. Under it, in the wide sweep of things, men grow wiser as they grow older, and societies better.

A failure establishes only this, that our determination to succeed was not strong enough.

How like a railway tunnel is the poor man's life, with the light of childhood at one end, the intermediate gloom, and only the glimmer of a future life at the other extremity!

The worth of a book is a matter of expressed juices.

Hope is the best part of our riches.