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

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.

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

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.

Everybody has his own theatre, in which he is manager, actor, prompter, playwright, sceneshifter, boxkeeper, doorkeeper, all in one, and audience into the bargain.

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