“Biographies of great, but especially of good men are most instructive and useful as helps, guides, and incentives to others. Some of the best are almost equivalent to gospels,–teaching high living ,high thinking, and energetic action, for their own and, the world’s good.”

No laws, however stringent, can make the idle industrious, the thriftless provident, or the drunken sober.

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.

Those who have most to do, and are willing to work, will find the most time.

Progress however, of the best kind, is comparatively slow. Great results cannot be achieved at once; and we must be satisfied to advance in life as we walk, step by step.

Help from without is often enfeebling in its effects, but help from within invariably invigorates.

Good sense, disciplined by experience and inspired by goodness, issues in practical wisdom.

Great men stamp their mind upon their age and nation.

Woman, above all other educators, educates humanly. Man is the brain, but woman is the heart, of humanity.

Like men, nations are purified and strengthened by trials.

It is not ease, but effort-not facility, but difficulty, makes men. There is, perhaps, no station in life in which difficulties have not to be encountered and overcome before any decided measure of success can be achieved.

There is no act, however trivial, but has its train of consequences.

We learn wisdom from failure much more than from success. We often discover what will do, by finding out what will not do; and probably he who never made a mistake never made a discovery.

It will generally be found that men who are constantly lamenting their ill luck are only reaping the consequences of their own neglect, mismanagement, and improvidence, or want of application.

The spirit of self-help is the root of all genuine growth in the individual.

Practical wisdom is only to be learned in the school of experience. Precepts and instruction are useful so far as they go, but, without the discipline of real life, they remain of the nature of theory only.

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.