An enemy will train us in watchfulness; for if he be wary to seize on every error and trip us, we shall be more heedful to expose nothing, and this will drive us to prudence and thoughtfulness.

when a great war has cut off the young men of a nation it never can be told thereafter what losses of scholars, poets, thinkers and great designers the country and the world have suffered.

An enemy will train us in watchfulness; for if he be wary to seize on every error and trip us, we shall be more heedful to expose nothing, and this will drive us to prudence and thoughtfulness.

As anger is a passion, it is to be ruled; as it is a weak passion, he is weak who rules it not.

Common sense is so just an understanding that it rises almost to a virtue; in truth, it involves virtues and their participation in judgment. For sound sense implies all powers uniting; none too prominent, so as to tyrannize; none too small, so as to be overborne.

Now, if we understand what unlucky persons are, we shall see that they are to be shunned, or that we are to consort with them only out of kindness or from sympathy, but without joining our interests with theirs; for they are persons who are not harmonious with the condition of things around them, and are as much at issue with life as a bird who should try to live in the water, or a fish to float in the air.

As anger is a passing storm, so it comes not gradually and with signs, but like a sudden sweep of wind or black squall.