“The test of a good letter is a very simple one. If one seems to hear the other person talking as one reads, it is a good letter.”

Ambition often puts Men upon doing the meanest offices; so climbing is performed in the same position with creeping.

People seldom refuse help, if one offers it in the right way.

Keeping up appearances is the most expensive thing in the world.

Very often a change of self is needed more than a change of scene.

I don’t like authority, at least I don’t like other people’s authority.

It is often wonderful how putting down on paper a clear statement of a case helps one to see, not perhaps the way out, but the way in.

A well begun is half ended.

I expect that all of us get pretty much what we deserve of appreciation.

Do you know the times when one seems to stick fast in circumstances like the fly in the jam-pot? It can’t be helped, and I suppose the best thing to do is to lay in a good store of jam!

The joy of all mysteries is the certainty which comes from their contemplation, that there are many doors yet for the soul to open on her upward and inward way.

I am sure it is one’s duty as a teacher to try to show boys that no opinions, no tastes, no emotions are worth much unless they are one’s own. I suffered acutely as a boy from the lack of being shown this.

Readjusting is a painful process, but most of us need it at one time or another.

The worst sorrows in life are not in its losses and misfortunes, but its fears.

It seems sometimes as if one were powerless to do any more from within to overcome troubles, and that help must come from without.

The moment that any life, however good, stifles you, you may be sure it isn’t your real life.

Congenial labor is the secret of happiness.

He who spares the wicked injures the good.

Success in life is the result of good judgment. Good judgment is usually the result of experience. Experience is usually the result of bad judgment.

The goal is not to be perfect by the end. The goal is to be better today.

I am larger, better than I thought; I did not know I held so much goodness.

The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.

In all of us, even in good men, there is a lawless wild-beast nature, which peers out in sleep.

I’m only good at being bad.

A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving.