We look for some reward of our endeavors and are disappointed that not success, not happiness, not even peace of conscience, crowns our ineffectual efforts to do well. Our frailties are invincible, our virtues barren; the battle goes sore against us to the going down of the sun.

To the old our mouths are always partly closed; we must swallow our obvious retorts and listen. They sit above our heads, on life's raised dais, and appeal at once to our respect and pity.

The cruelest lies are often told in silence. A man may have sat in a room for hours and not opened his teeth, and yet come out of that room a disloyal friend or a vile calumniator.

Doubtless the world is quite right in a million ways; but you have to be kicked about a little to convince you of the fact.

When your toil has been a pleasure, you have not earned money merely, but money, health, delight, and moral profit, all in one.

Jealousy is the most radical primeval and naked form of admiration in war paint, so to speak.

The difficulty is not to write, but to write what you mean.