It would surpass the powers of a well man nowadays to take up his bed and walk, and I should certainly advise a sick one to lay down his bed and run.

Our whole life is startlingly moral. There is never an instant's truce between virtue and vice.

If you take this life to be simply what old religious folks pretend (I mean the effete, gone to seed in a drought, mere human galls stung by the devil once), then all your joy and serenity is reduced to grinning and bearing it. The fact is, you have got to take the world on your shoulders like Atlas, and "put along" with it. You will do this for an idea's sake, and your success will be in proportion to your devotion to ideas. It may make your back ache occasionally, but you will have the satisfaction of hanging it or twirling it to suit yourself.

All misfortune is but a stepping stone to fortune.

We cannot but pity the boy who has never fired a gun; he is no more humane, while his education has been sadly neglected.

Every nail driven should be as another rivet in the machine of the universe, you carrying on the work.

if i repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior. what demon possessed me that i behaved so well?