The truth hurts, but silence kills.

Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen.

How often we recall with regret that Napoleon once shot at a magazine editor and missed him and killed a publisher. But we remember with charity that his intentions were good.

If we had less statemanship we could get along with fewer battleships.

There was no place in the land where the seeker could not find some small budding sign of pity for the slave. No place in all the land but one - the pulpit. It yielded last; it always does. It fought a strong and stubborn fight, and then did what it always does, joined the procession - at the tail end. Slavery fell. The slavery texts in the Bible remained; the practice changed; that was all.

There is no character, howsoever good and fine, but it can be destroyed by ridicule, howsoever poor and witless. Observe the ass, for instance: his character is about perfect, he is the choicest spirit among all the humbler animals, yet see what ridicule has brought him to. Instead of feeling complimented when we are called an ass, we are left in doubt.

A man has no business to be depressed by a disappointment, anyway; he ought to make up his mind to get even.