Beautiful is old age—beautiful as the slow-dropping mellow autumn of a rich glorious summer. In the old man, Nature has fulfilled her work; she loads him with blessings; she fills him with the fruits of a well-spent life; and, surrounded by his children and his children's children, she rocks him softly away to a grave, to which he is followed with blessings. God forbid we should not call it beautiful.

Ignorance is the dominion of absurdity.

The practical effect of a belief is the real test of its soundness.

A single seed of fact will produce in a season or two a harvest of calumnies; but sensible men will pay no attention to them.

No person is ever good for much, that hasn't been swept off their feet by enthusiasm between ages twenty and thirty

Nature is less partial than she appears, and all situations in life have their compensations along with them.

That which especially distinguishes a high order of man from a low order of man, that which constitutes human goodness, human nobleness, is surely not the degree of enlightenment with which men pursue their own advantage; but it is self-forgetfulness; it is self-sacrifice; it is the disregard of personal pleasure, personal indulgence, personal advantage, remote or present, because some other line of conduct is more right.