When young men or women are beginning life, the most important period, it is often said, is that in which their habits are formed. That is a very important period. But the period in which the ideals of the young are formed and adopted is more important still. For the ideal with which you go forward to measure things determines the nature, so far as you are concerned, of everything you meet.

God bless the good-natured, for they bless everybody else.

A gamester, as such, is the cool, calculating, essential spirit of concentrated, avaricious selfishness.

The elms of New England! They are as much a part of her beauty as the columns of the Parthenon were the glory of its architecture.

There is nothing that a New-Englander so nearly worships as an argument.

The fear of doing right is the grand treason in times of danger.

A bird in a cage is not half a bird.