Men must necessarily be the active agents of their own well-being and well-doing they themselves must in the very nature of things be their own best helpers.

The principal industrial excellence of the English people lay in their capacity of present exertion for a distant object.

The truest politeness comes of sincerity.

True politeness is consideration for the opinions of others. It has been said of dogmatism that it is only puppyism come to its full growth; and certainly the worst form this quality can assume is that of opinionativeness and arrogance.

Labor is still, and ever will be, the inevitable price set upon everything which is valuable.

Whatever is done for men takes away from the stimulus and necessity of doing things for themselves. The value of legislative as an agent in human advancement has been much over-estimated. No laws, however stringent, can make the idle industrious, the thriftless provident or the drunken sober.

Though an inheritance of acres may be bequeathed, an inheritance of knowledge and wisdom cannot. The wealthy man may pay others for doing his work for him; but it is impossible to get his thinking done for him by another, or to purchase any kind of self-culture.