Next to ingratitude the most painful thing to bear is gratitude.

If one, then, asks me the meaning of our flag, I say to him, It means just what Concord and Lexington meant, what Bunker Hill meant; it means the whole glorious Revolutionary War, which was, in short, the rising up of a valiant young people against an old tyranny, to establish the most momentous doctrine that the world had ever known - the right of men to their own selves and to their liberties.

Never excuse yourself.

Were one to ask me in which direction I think man strongest, I should say, his capacity to hate.

The true secret of giving advice is, after you have honestly given it, to be perfectly indifferent whether it is taken or not, and never persist in trying to set people right.

Ordinarily rivers run small at the beginning, grow broader and broader as they proceed, and become widest and deepest at the point, where they enter the sea. It is such rivers that the Christian's life is like. But the life of the mere worldly man is like those rivers in Southern Africa, which, proceeding from mountain freshets, are broad and deep at the beginning, and grow narrower and more shallow as they advance. They waster themselves by soaking into the sands, and at last they die out entirely. The farther they run the less there is of them.

It's not the work which kills people, it's the worry. It's not the revolution that destroys machinery it's the friction.