The only true source of politeness is consideration,--that vigilant moral sense which never loses sight of the rights, the claims, and the sensibilities of others. This is the one quality, over all others, necessary to make a gentleman.

Stagnation is something worse than death. It is corruption, also.

There is a native baseness in the ambition which seeks beyond its desert, that never shows more conspicuously than when, no matter how, it temporarily gains its object.

There is no doubt such a thing as chance, but I see no reason why Providence should not make use of it.

Tact is one of the first of mental virtues, the absence of which is frequently fatal to the best of talents. Without denying that it is a talent of itself, it will suffice if we admit that it supplies the place of many talents.

No doubt solitude is wholesome, but so is abstinence after a surfeit. The true life of man is in society.

The proverb answers where the sermon fails.