No man is happy without a delusion of some kind. Delusions are as necessary to our happiness as realities.

Affliction, like the iron-smith, shapes as it smites.

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

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.

There is great beauty in going through life without anxiety or fear. Half our fears are baseless, and the other half discreditable.

Panic is a sudden desertion of us, and a going over to the enemy of our imagination.

He that shrinks from the grave with too great a dread, has an invisible fear behind him pushing him into it.