National progress is the sum of individual industry, energy, and uprightness, as national decay is of individual idleness, selfishness, and vice.

It will generally be found that men who are constantly lamenting their ill luck are only reaping the consequences of their own neglect, mismanagement, and improvidence, or want of application.

The great and good do no die even in this world. Embalmed in books, their spirits walk abroad. The book is a living voice. It is an intellect to which one still listens.

Men often discover their affinity to each other by the mutual love they have for a book.

The apprenticeship of difficulty is one which the greatest of men have had to serve.

Character is itself a fortune.

Lost wealth may be replaced by industry, lost knowledge by study, lost health by temperance or medicine, but lost time is gone forever.