The strife of politics tends to unsettle the calmest understanding, and ulcerate the most benevolent heart. There are no bigotries or absurdities too gross for parties to create or adopt under the stimulus of political passions.

Wit is an unexpected explosion of thought.

Even in social life, it is persistency which attracts confidence, more than talents and accomplishments.

Humor, warm and all-embracing as the sunshine, bathes its objects in a genial and abiding light.

Character is the spiritual body of the person, and represents the individualization of vital experience, the conversion of unconscious things into self-conscious men.

In activity we must find our joy as well as glory; and labor, like everything else that is good, is its own reward.

The great characteristic of men of active genius is a sublime self-confidence, springing not from self-conceit, but from an intense identification of the man with his object, which lifts him altogether above the fear of danger and death, which gives to his enterprise a character of insanity to the common eye, and which communicates an almost superhuman audacity to his will.