Be what you are. This is the first step toward becoming better than you are.

To no kind of begging are people so averse, as to begging pardon; that is, when there is any serious ground for doing so.

Many people make their own God; and he is much what the French may mean when they talk of le bon Dieu,--very indulgent, rather weak, near at hand when we want anything, but far away out of sight when we have a mind to do wrong. Such a God is as much an idol as if he were an image of stone.

The next best thing to a very good joke is a very bad one.

A weak mind sinks under prosperity, as well as under adversity.

By the ancients, courage was regarded as practically the main part of virtue; by us, though I hope we are not less brave, purity is so regarded now.

The mind is like a sheet of white paper in this, that the impressions it receives the oftenest, and retains the longest, are black ones.