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.

The best that we can do for one another is to exchange our thoughts freely; and that, after all, is about all.

Our human laws are but the copies, more or less imperfect, of the eternal laws, so far as we can read them.

Fear is the parent of cruelty.

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

Nature is not a partisan, but out of her ample treasue house she produces children in infinite variety, of which she is equally the mother, and disowns none of them.

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.