Without passion man is a mere latent force and possibility, like the flint which awaits the shock of the iron before it can give forth its spark.

If ignorance and passion are the foes of popular morality, it must be confessed that moral indifference is the malady of the cultivated classes.

Time wasted is a theft from God.

Our true history is scarcely ever deciphered by others. The chief part of the drama is a monologue, or rather an intimate debate between God, our conscience, and ourselves. Tears, grieves, depressions, disappointments, irritations, good and evil thoughts, decisions, uncertainties, deliberations --all these belong to our secret, and are almost all incommunicable and intransmissible, even when we try to speak of them, and even when we write them down.

To be always ready a man must be able to cut a knot, for everything cannot be untied.

To learn new habits is everything, for it is to reach the substance of life. Life is but a tissue of habits.

Our duty is to be useful, not according to our desires but according to our powers.