It is singular how impatient men are with overpraise of others, how patient of overpraise of themselves; and yet the one does them no injury, while the other may be their ruin.

Piety is indifferent whether she enters at the eye or at the ear. There is none of the senses at which she does not knock one day or other. The Puritans forgot this, and thrust Beauty out of the meeting-house and slammed the door in her face.

I have always been of the mind that in a democracy manners are the only effective weapons against the bowie-knife.

There comes Emerson first, whose rich words, every one, Are like gold nails in temples to hang trophies on.

A great man is made up of qualities that meet or make great occasions.

We kind o' thought Christ went agin war an' pillage.

No man is born into the world whose work is not born with him. There is always work, and tools to work with, for those who will, and blessed are the horny hands of toil. The busy world shoves angrily aside the man who stands with arms akimbo until occasion tells him what to do; and he who waits to have his task marked out shall die and leave his errand unfulfilled.