To be happy, you must learn to forget yourself.

Talk not of genius baffled. Genius is master of man. Genius does what it must, and Talent does what it can.

A man's heart must be very frivolous if the possession of fame rewards the labor to attain it. For the worst of reputation is that it is not palpable or present - we do not feel or see or taste it.

People praise us behind our backs, but we hear them not; few before our faces, and who is not suspicious of the truth of such praise?

The more I think of a people calmly developing, in regions excluded from our sight and deemed uninhabitable by our sages, powers surpassing our most disciplined modes of force, and virtues to which our life, social and political, becomes antagonistic in proportion as our civilisation advances - the more devoutly I pray that ages may yet elapse before there emerge into sunlight our inevitable destroyers.

The affections are immortal! They are the sympathies which unite the ceaseless generations.

A good heart is better than all the heads in the world.