The knowledge beyond all other knowledge is the knowledge how to excuse.

The trouble with men of sense is that they are so dreadfully in earnest all the while.

Most books fail, not so much from a want of ability in their authors, as from an absence in their productions of a thorough development of their ability.

The extent of poverty in the world is much exaggerated. Our sensitiveness makes half our poverty; our fears--anxieties for ills that never happen--a greater part of the other half.

Six traits of effective leaders: 1. Make others feel important 2. Promote a vision 3. Follow the golden rule 4. Admit mistakes 5. Criticize others only in private 6. Stay close to the action Example has more followers than reason. We unconsciously imitate what pleases us, and approximate to the characters we most admire.

We should round every day of stirring action with an evening of thought. We learn nothing of our experience except we muse upon it.

A good thought is indeed a great boon, for which God is to be first thanked; next he who is the first to utter it, and then, in a lesser, but still in a considerable degree, the friend who is the first to quote it to us. Whoever adopts and circulates a just thought, participates in the merit that originated it.