If you think you can temper yourself into manliness by sitting here over your books, it is the very silliest fancy that ever tempted a young man to his ruin. You cannot dream yourself into a character; you must hammer and forge yourself one.

Mistakes are often the best teachers.

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

We cannot live on probabilities. The faith in which we can live bravely and die in peace must be a certainty, so far as it professes to be a faith at all, or it is nothing.

Every one of us ... knows better than he practices, and recognizes a better law than he obeys.

There are epidemics of nobleness as well as epidemics of disease.

As we advance in life, we learn the limits of our abilities.