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.

We live merely on the crust or rind of things.

Mistakes are often the best teachers.

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

To tell men that they cannot help themselves is to fling them into recklessness and despair.

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

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.