The small courtesies sweeten life; the greater ennoble it.

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.

A mother is the best friend God ever gave.

Weakness ineffectually seeks to disguise itself,--like a drunken man trying to show how sober he is.

To quote copiously and well, requires taste, judgment, and erudition, a feeling for the beautiful, an appreciation of the noble, and a sense of the profound.

The greatest happiness comes from the greatest activity.

Fortune, like a coy mistress, loves to yield her favors, though she makes us wrest them from her.