The beginnings of moral enterprises in this world are never to be measured by any apparent growth. ... At length comes the sudden ripeness and the full success, and he who is called in at the final moment deems this success his own. He is but the reaper and not the labourer. Other men sowed and tilled and he but enters into their labours.

The world's battlefields have been in the heart chiefly; more heroism has been displayed in the household and the closet, than on the most memorable battlefields in history.

Cant is the twin sister of hypocrisy.

There is no friendship, no love, like that of the parent for the child.

Nowhere on the globe do men live so well as in America, or grumble so much.

The last person one wants to be is themselves. Sadly, that is the best person to be.

The meanest, most contemptible kind of praise is that which first speaks well of a man, and then qualifies it with a But.