You learn to know a pilot in a storm.

As the soil, however rich it may be, cannot be productive without cultivation, so the mind without culture can never produce good fruit

We should every night call ourselves to an account: What infirmity have I mastered today? What passions opposed? What temptation resisted? What virtue acquired? Our vices will abate of themselves if they be brought every day to the shrift.

A benefit consists not in what is done or given, but in the intention of the giver or doer.

We should give as we would receive, cheerfully, quickly, and without hesitation; for there is no grace in a benefit that sticks to the fingers.

Nothing, to my way of thinking, is a better proof of a well-ordered mind than a man's ability to stop just where he is and pass some time in his own company.

Success is not greedy, as people think, but insignificant. That is why it satisfies nobody.