Repose and cheerfulness is the badge of the gentleman; repose in energy.

Every vice is only an exaggeration of a necessary and virtuous function.

You have first an instinct, then an opinion, then a knowledge, as the plant has root, bud, and fruit.

A mind does not receive truth as a chest receives jewels that are put into it, but as the stomach takes up food into the system. It is no longer food, but flesh, and is assimilated. The appetite and the power of digestion measure our right to knowledge. He has it who can use it. As soon as our accumulation overruns our invention or power to use, the evils of intellectual gluttony begin,— congestion of the brain, apoplexy and strangulation.

We fill the hands and nurseries of our children with all manner of dolls, drums and horses, withdrawing their eyes from the plain face and... Nature, the sun and moon, the animals, the water and stones, which should be their toys.

The only compensation which war offers for its manifold mischiefs, is in the great personal qualities to which it gives scope and occasion.

A strenuous soul hates cheap success. It is the ardor of the assailant that makes the vigor of the defendant.