“You have come into a hard world. I know of only one easy place in it, and that is the grave.”

Intelligence increases mere physical ability one half. The use of the head abridges the labor of the hands.

A man who does not know how to be angry, does not know how to be good. Now and then a man should be shaken to the core with indignation over things evil.

The ability to convert ideas to things is the secret of outward success.

The sun does not shine for a few trees and flowers, but for the wide world’s joy.

Everyone has influence, for good or bad, upon others.

What I spent, I had; What I kept, I lost; What I gave, I have.

No matter what looms ahead, if you can eat today, enjoy today, mix good cheer with friends today enjoy it and bless God for it.

It’s easier to go down a hill than up it but the view is much better at the top.

Interest works night and day in fair weather and in foul. It gnaws at a man’s substance with invisible teeth.

He is rich or poor according to what he is, not according to what he has.

Involved sentences, crooked, circuitous, and parenthetical, no matter how musically they may be balanced, are prejudicial to a facile understanding of the truth.

To know that one has a secret is to know half the secret itself.

Well married a person has wings, poorly married shackles.

To become an able and successful man in any profession, three things are necessary, nature, study and practice.

To do good work a man should no doubt be industrious. To do great work he must certainly be idle a well.

All men are tempted. There is no man that lives that can’t be broken down, provided it is the right temptation, put in the right spot.

This world owes all its forward impulses to people ill at ease.

For easy things, that may be got at will, Most sorts of men do set but little store.

It is one of the enjoyments of retirement that you are able to drift through the day at your own pace, easy in the knowledge that you have put hard work and achievement behind you.

That element of surprise is what I look for when I am writing. It is my way of judging what I am doing – which is never an easy thing to do.

Reason is a very light rider, and easily shook off.

Good manners is the art of making those people easy with whom we converse. Whoever makes the fewest people uneasy is the best bred in the room.

Small causes are sufficient to make a man uneasy, when great ones are not in the way: for want of a block he will stumble at a straw.

I was surprised, as always, be how easy the act of leaving was, and how good it felt. The world was suddenly rich with possibility.