Life is a mirror: if you frown at it, it frowns back; if you smile, it returns the greeting.

If success is rare and slow, everybody knows how quick and easy ruin is.

Let us people who are so uncommonly clever and learned have a great tenderness and pity for the poor folks who are not endowed with the prodigious talents which we have.

Our measure of rewards and punishments is most partial and incomplete, absurdly inadequate, utterly worldly; and we wish to continue it into the next world. Into that next and awful world we strive to pursue men, and send after them our impotent paltry verdicts of condemnation or acquittal. We set up our paltry little rod to measure heaven immeasurable.

To see a young couple loving each other is no wonder; but to see an old couple loving each other is the best sight of all.

He who meanly admires a mean thing is a snob--perhaps that is a safe definition of the character.

Let a man who has to make his fortune in life remember this maxim: Attacking is the only secret. Dare and the world yields, or if it beats you sometimes, dare it again and you will succeed.