What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us.

We should come home from adventures, and perils, and discoveries every day with new experience and character.

Time is like a handful of sand - the tighter you grasp it, the faster it runs through your fingers.

One man lies in his words, and gets a bad reputation; another in his manners, and enjoys a good one.

It is not a man's duty, as a matter of course, to devote himself to the eradication of any, even the most enormous wrong; he may still properly have other concerns to engage him; but it is his duty, at least, to wash his hands of it, and, if he gives it no thought longer, not to give it practically his support. If I devote myself to other pursuits and contemplations, I must first see, at least, that I do not pursue them sitting upon another man's shoulders.

For most men, it appears to me, are in a strange uncertainty about it (life), whether it is of the devil or of God, and have somewhat hastily concluded that it is the chief end of man here to 'glorify God and enjoy him forever.'

A book should contain pure discoveries, glimpses of terra firma, though by shipwrecked mariners, and not the art of navigation by those who have never been out of sight of land.