Not that which men do worthily, but that which they do successfully, is what history makes haste to record.

Do not be troubled because you have not great virtues. God made a million spears of grass where He made one tree. The earth is fringed and carpeted, not with forests, but with grasses. Only have enough of little virtues and common fidelities, and you need not mourn because you are neither a hero or a saint.

It's easier to go down a hill than up it but the view is much better at the top.

Many men want wealth,--not a competence alone, but a live-story competence. Everything subserves this; and religion they would like as a sort of lightning-rod to their houses, to ward off by and by the bolts of Divine wrath.

The little troubles and worries of life may be as stumbling blocks in our way, or we may make them stepping-stones to a nobler character and to Heaven. Troubles are often the tools by which God fashions us for better things.

Laughter is day, and sobriety is night; a smile is the twilight that hovers gently between both, more bewitching than either.

Happiness is not the end of life: character is.