Mirth is God's medicine. Everybody ought to bathe in it. Grim care, moroseness, anxiety,--all this rust of life, ought to be scoured off by the oil of mirth. It is better than emery. Every man ought to rub himself with it. A man without mirth is like a wagon without springs, in which one is caused disagreeably to jolt by every pebble over which it runs.

Death is the dropping of the flower, that the fruit may swell.

Success surely comes with conscience in the long run, other things being equal. Capacity and fidelity are commercially profitable qualities.

The imagination is the secret and marrow of civilization. It is the very eye of faith.

Age and youth look upon life from the opposite ends of the telescope; it is exceedingly long,--it is exceedingly short.

The ability to convert ideas to things is the secret of outward success.

There is no such thing as white lies; a lie is as black as a coalpit, and twice as foul.