The most influential of all the virtues are those which are the most in request for daily use. They wear the best, and last the longest.
Childhood is like a mirror, which reflects in after life the images first presented to it.
Although genius always commands admiration, character most secures respect. The former is more the product of the brain, the latter of heart-power; and in the long run it is the heart that rules in life.
Experience serves to prove that the worth and strength of a state depend far less upon the form of its institutions than upon the character of its men; for the nation is only the aggregate of individual conditions, and civilization itself is but a question of personal, improvement.
The principal industrial excellence of the English people lay in their capacity of present exertion for a distant object.
The great lesson of biography is to show what man can be and do at his best. A noble life put fairly on record acts like an inspiration to others.
When typhus or cholera breaks out, they tell us that Nobody is to blame. That terrible Nobody! How much he has to answer for. More mischief is done by Nobody than by all the world besides.
Whatever is done for men takes away from the stimulus and necessity of doing things for themselves. The value of legislative as an agent in human advancement has been much over-estimated. No laws, however stringent, can make the idle industrious, the thriftless provident or the drunken sober.
The noble people will be nobly ruled, and the ignorant and corrupt ignobly.
Conscience is that peculiar faculty of the soul which may be called the religious instinct.
Riches are oftener an impediment than a stimulus to action; and in many cases they are quite as much a misfortune as a blessing.
The healthy spirit of self-help created among working people would, more than any other measure, serve to raise them as a class; and this, not by pulling down others, but by levelling them up to a higher and still advancing standard of religion, intelligence, and virtue.
The greatest slave is not he who is ruled by a despot, great though that evil be, but he who is in the thrall of his own moral ignorance, selfishness, and vice.
Energy of will may be defined to be the very central power of character in a man.
There are many counterfeits of character, but the genuine article is difficult to be mistaken.
Cheerfulness is also an excellent wearing quality. It has been called the bright weather of the heart.
The highest culture is not obtained from the teacher when at school or college, so much as by our ever diligent self-education when we become men.
Good sense, disciplined by experience and inspired by goodness, issues in practical wisdom.
Riches do not constitute any claim to distinction. It is only the vulgar who admire riches as riches.
Great men are always exceptional men; and greatness itself is but comparative. Indeed, the range of most men in life is so limited that very few have the opportunity of being great.