The cheerful live longest in years, and afterwards in our regards. Cheerfulness is the off-shoot of goodness.

Motives are better than actions. Men drift into crime. Of evil they do more than they contemplate, and of good they contemplate more than they do.

At the best, sarcasms, bitter irony, scathing wit, are a sort of swordplay of the mind. You pink your adversary, and he is forthwith dead; and then you deserve to be hung for it.

The greatest events of an age are its best thoughts. Thought finds its way into action.

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

Melancholy sees the worst of things...[rather than the best]

The best evidence of merit is a cordial recognition of it whenever and wherever it may be found.