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.

True greatness is the most ready to recognize and most willing to obey those simple outward laws which have been sanctioned by the experience of mankind.

To deny the freedom of the will is to make morality impossible.

You cannot dream yourself into a character; you must hammer and forge yourself one.

We live merely on the crust or rind of things.

Courage is, on all hands, considered as an essential of high character.

But the world was also so constructed, owing to the nature of the Maker of it, that superior strength was found in the long run to lie with those who had the right on their side.