It is our relation to circumstances that determine their influence over us. The same wind that blows one ship into port may blow another off shore.

Excessive sensibility is only another name for morbid self-consciousness.

The next best thing to being witty one's self, is to be able to be able to quote another's wit.

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

Character is very much a matter of health.

It is safer to quote what is written than what is spoken. What a man writes it is fair to presume he believes as a matter of general conviction, but it is not so with what he utters in the freedom of conversation. In that he may only express the feeling of the moment, and not his settled judgment, or matured opinion.

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