Modern education has devoted itself to the teaching of impudence, and then we complain that we can no longer control our mobs.

Imperfection is in some sort essential to all that we know of life. It is the sign of life in a mortal body, that is to say, of a state of progress and change. Nothing that lives is, or can be rigidly perfect; part of it is decaying, part nascent.

The principle of all successful effort is to try to do not what is absolutely the best, but what is easily within our power, and suited for our temperament and condition.

And remember, child, that nothing is ever done beautifully, which is done in rivalship; or nobly, which is done in pride.

It is eminently a weariable faculty, eminently delicate, and incapable of bearing fatigue; so that if we give it too many objects at a time to employ itself upon, or very grand ones for a long time together, it fails under the effort, becomes jaded, exactly as the limbs do by bodily fatigue, and incapable of answering any farther appeal till it has had rest.

No individual rain drop ever considers itself responsible for the flood.

There is no solemnity so deep, to a right-thinking creature, as that of dawn.