A volunteer, you assign yourself specific roles and risks according to your judgement of their brilliance and importance, and you see when life itself may be justifiably devoted to them.

It is the mind that maketh good or ill, That maketh wretch or happy, rich or poor.

If not for that of conscience, yet at least for ambition's sake, let us reject ambition, let us disdain that thirst of honor and renown, so low and mendicant; that it makes us beg it of all sorts of people.

Every movement reveals us.

I want death to find me planting my cabbages, but careless of death, and still more of my unfinished garden.

No profession or occupation is more pleasing than the military; a profession or exercise both noble in execution (for the strongest, most generous and proudest of all virtues is true valor) and noble in its cause. No utility either more just or universal than the protection of the repose or defense of the greatness of one's country. The company and daily conversation of so many noble, young and active men cannot but be well-pleasing to you.

Petty vexations may at times be petty, but still they are vexations. The smallest and most inconsiderable annoyances are the most piercing. As small letters weary the eye most, so the smallest affairs disturb us most.