“A person can’t help their birth.”

It’s a great comfort to some people to groan over their imaginary ills.

We know that Heaven chastens those whom it loves best; being pleased by repeated trials, to make pure spirits more pure.

Vanity is often the unseen spur.

Lucky he who has been educated to bear his fate, whatsoever it may be, by an early example of uprightness, and a childish training in honor.

When you look at me, when you think of me, I am in paradise.

Oh, Vanity of vanities! How wayward the decrees of Fate are; How very weak the very wise, How very small the very great are!

Love seems to survive life, and to reach beyond it. I think we take it with us past the grave. Do we not still give it to those who have left us? May we not hope that they feel it for us, and that we shall leave it here in one or two fond bosoms, when we also are gone?

Sir, Respect Your Dinner: idolize it, enjoy it properly. You will be many hours in the week, many weeks in the year, and many years in your life happier if you do.

Alas! we are the sport of destiny.

The great moments of life are but moments like the others. Your doom is spoken in a word or two. A single look from the eyes; a mere pressure of the hand, may decide it; or of the lips though they cannot speak.

Humor is wit and love.

It is comparatively easy to leave a mistress, but very hard to be left by one.

To love and win is the best thing. To love and lose, the next best.

There are a thousand thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up a pen to write.

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

An immense percentage of snobs, I believe, is to be found in every rank of this mortal life.

A genius is not born, but is educated and trained.

Happy the heart where love has come to birth.

Truth is the only healthy place from which to speak. Assumption is the birthplace of godless chatter.

I lost and found myself in all your maybe’s.

It could have been worse. I could have been born black.

When you believe in your dream and your vision, then it begins to attract its own resources. No one was born to be a failure.

Men are born soft and supple; dead, they are stiff and hard. Plants are born tender and pliant; dead, they are brittle and dry. Thus whoever is stiff and inflexible is a disciple of death.

To yield to Resistance deforms our spirit. It stunts us and makes us less than we are and were born to be.