Give us grace and strength to forbear and to persevere. Give us courage and gaiety and the quiet mind, spare to us our friends, soften to us our enemies.
It is not likely that posterity will fall in love with us, but not impossible that it may respect or sympathize so a man would rather leave behind him the portrait of his spirit than a portrait of his face.
Politics is perhaps the only profession for which no preparation is thought necessary.
I am in the habit of looking not so much to the nature of a gift as to the spirit in which it is offered.
It is not so much for its beauty that the forest makes a claim upon men’s hearts, as for that subtle something, that quality of air that emanation from old trees, that so wonderfully changes and renews a weary spirit.
To be wholly devoted to some intellectual exercise is to have succeeded in life.
Talk is by far the most accessible of pleasures. It costs nothing in money, it is all profit, it completes our education, founds and fosters our friendships, and can be enjoyed at any age and in almost any state of health.
In marriage, a man becomes slack and selfish, and undergoes a fatty degeneration of his moral being.