How easy to be amiable in the midst of happiness and success.

It is far more important to me to preserve an unblemished conscience than to compass any object however great.

Nothing which has entered into our experience is ever lost.

One good anecdote is worth a volume of biography.

Undoubtedly a man is to labor to better his condition, but first to better himself.

The mind, in proportion as it is cut off from free communication with nature, with revelation, with God, with itself, loses its life, just as the body droops when debarred from the air and the cheering light from heaven.

We smile at the ignorance of the savage who cuts down the tree in order to reach its fruit; but the same blunder is made by every person who is over eager and impatient in the pursuit of pleasure.

Every human being has a work to carry on within, duties to perform abroad, influence to exert, which are peculiarly his, and which no conscience but his own can teach.

Grandeur of character lies wholly in force of soul, that is, in the force of thought, moral principle, and love, and this may be found in the humblest condition of life.

The reveries of youth, in which so much energy is wasted, are the yearnings of a Spirit made for what it has not found but must forever seek as an Ideal.

Faith is love taking the form of aspiration.

Great minds are to make others great. Their superiority is to be used, not to break the multitude to intellectual vassalage, not to establish over them a spiritual tyranny, but to rouse them from lethargy, and to aid them to judge for themselves.

Difficulties are meant to rouse, not discourage. The human spirit is to grow strong by conflict.

No power in society, no hardship in your condition can depress you, keep you down, in knowledge, power, virtue, influence, but by your own consent.

Every man is a volume if you know how to read him.

Each of us is meant to have a character all our own, to be what no other can exactly be, and do what no other can exactly do.

Influence is to be measured, not by the extent of surface it covers, but by its kind.

The world is governed by opinion.

The best books for a man are not always those which the wise recommend, but often those which meet the peculiar wants, the natural thirst of his mind, and therefore awaken interest and rivet thought.

The office of government is not to confer happiness, but to give men the opportunity to work out happiness for themselves.