There is something in us, somehow, that, in the most degraded condition, we snatch at a chance to deceive ourselves into a fanciedsuperiority to others, whom we suppose lower in the scale than ourselves.
To be hated cordially, is only a left-handed compliment.
In their precise tracings-out and subtle causations, the strongest and fieriest emotions of life defy all analytical insight.
Appalling is the soul of a man! Better might one be pushed off into the material spaces beyond the uttermost orbit of our sun, than once feel himself fairly afloat in himself.
He who goes oftenest round Cape Horn goes the most circumspectly.
The sweetest joys of life grow in the very jaws of its perils.
Better be an old maid, a woman with herself as a husband, than the wife of a fool; and Solomon more than hints that all men are fools; and every wise man knows himself to be one.
Personal prudence, even when dictated by quite other than selfish considerations, surely is no special virtue in a military man; while an excessive love of glory, impassioning a less burning impulse, the honest sense of duty, is the first.
Our institutions have a potent digestion, and may in time convert and assimilate to good all elements thrown in, however originally alien.
Out of the trunk, the branches grow; out of them, the twigs. So, in productive subjects, grow the chapters.
To know how to grow old is the master work of wisdom, and one of the most difficult chapters in the great art of living.
In what rapt ether sails the world, of which the weariest will never weary?
Human madness is oftentimes a cunning and most feline thing.
Faith and philosophy are air, but events are brass.
Aid my disillusionment, my friend!
Until we understand that our grief outweighs a thousand joys, we will never understand what Christianity is all about.
You must have plenty of sea-room to tell the truth in.
The worst of our evils we blindly inflict upon ourselves; our officers cannot remove them, even if they would.
Nature has not implanted any power in man that was not meant to be exercised at times, though too often our powers have been abused.
What is an atheist, but one who does not, or will not, see in the universe a ruling principle of love; and what a misanthrope, but one who does not, or will not, see in man a ruling principle of kindness?