It is long ere we discover how rich we are. Our history, we are sure, is quite tame: we have nothing to write, nothing to infer. But our wiser years still run back to the despised recollections of childhood, and always we are fishing up some wonderful article out of that pond; until, by and by, we begin to suspect that the biography of the one foolish person we know is, in reality, nothing less than the miniature paraphrase of the hundred volumes of the Universal History.

Divine persons are character born, or, to borrow a phrase from Napoleon, they are victory organized.

Great men exist that there might be greater men.

A man is not to aim at innocence, any more than he is to aim at hair, but he is to keep it.

Cities force growth and make people talkative and entertaining, but they also make them artificial.

There is also something excellent in every audience,--the capacity of virtue. They are ready to be beatified.

Meet your failure nobly, and it will not differ from success.