Decide on what you think is right, and stick to it.

Fancy what a game of chess would be if all the chessmen had passions and intellects, more or less small and cunning; if you were not only uncertain about your adversary's men, but a little uncertain also about your own. You would be especially likely to be beaten, if you depended arrogantly on your mathematical imagination, and regarded your passionate pieces with contempt. Yet this imaginary chess is easy compared with a game a man has to play against his fellow-men with other fellow-men for instruments.

Impatient people, according to Bacon, are like the bees, and kill themselves in stinging others.

I don't feel sure about doing good in any way now; everything seems like going on a mission to a people whose language I don't know.

In the first moments when we come away from the presence of death, every other relation to the living is merged, to our feeling, in the great relation of a common nature and a common destiny.

Any coward can fight a battle when he's sure of winning; but give me the man who has the pluck to fight when he's sure of losing.

Excellence encourages one about life generally; it shows the spiritual wealth of the world.