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

Knowledge is the parent of love; wisdom, love itself.

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

Few people have courage enough to appear as good as they really are. Most people confuse greatness with power, despite the fact that greatness has nothing to do with power.

Children always turn towards the light. Oh that grown-up people in this world became like little children!

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.

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