Mirthfulness is in the mind and you cannot get it out. It is just as good in its place as conscience or veneration.

A door that seems to stand open must be of a man's size, or it is not the door that providence means for him.

Next to the pastoral came the agricultural life. When you add to that the manufacturing phase of development, society begins to fill out, and needs but wings to fly, and commerce is its wings.

Greatness lies, not in being strong, but in the right using of strength; and strength is not used rightly when it serves only to carry a man above his fellows for his own solitary glory. He is the greatest whose strength carries up the most hearts by the attraction of his own.

I received a letter from a lad asking me for an easy berth. To this I replied: You cannot be an editor; do not try the law; do not think of the ministry; let alone all ships and merchandise; abhor politics; don't practice medicine; be not a farmer or a soldier or a sailor; don't study, don't think. None of these are easy. O, my son, you have come into a hard world. I know of only one easy place in it, and that is the grave!

All men are tempted. There is no man that lives that can't be broken down, provided it is the right temptation, put in the right spot.

Laws and institutions, like clocks, must occasionally be cleaned, wound up, and set to true time.