What is called virtue in the common sense of the word has nothing to do with this or that man's prosperity, or even happiness.

Mistakes are often the best teachers.

There is always a part of our being into which those who are dearer to us far than our own lives are yet unable to enter.

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.

The soul of man is not a thing which comes and goes, is builded and decays like the elemental frame in which it is set to dwell, but a very living force, a very energy of God's organic will, which rules and moulds this universe.

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.

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