“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.”

Progress, of the best kind, is comparatively slow.

The great high-road of human welfare lies along the old highway of steadfast welldoing; and they who are the most persistent, and work in the truest spirit, will invariably be the most successful.

To set a lofty example is the richest bequest a man can leave behind.

The best school of discipline is home. Family life is God’s own method of training the young, and homes are very much as women make them.

Time is of no account with great thoughts, which are as fresh to -day as when they first passed through their authors’ minds ages ago.

Energy enables a man to force his way through irksome drudgery and dry details and caries him onward and upward to every station in life.

The reason why so little is done, is generally because so little is attempted.

No laws, however stringent, can make the idle industrious, the thriftless provident, or the drunken sober. Such reforms can only be effected by means of individual action, economy and self-denial; by better habits, rather than by greater rights.

Character is itself a fortune.

Persons with comparatively moderate powers will accomplish much, if they apply themselves wholly and indefatigably to one thing at a time.

Cheerfulness is also an excellent wearing quality. It has been called the bright weather of the heart.

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.

Marriage like government is a series of compromises. One must give and take, repair and restrain, endure and be patient.

Conscience is that peculiar faculty of the soul which may be called the religious instinct.

Life is of little value unless it be consecrated by duty.

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.

We are intensely proud of their noble record and are glad to have had the whole world see how irresistible they are in their might when a cause which America holds dear is at stake. The whole nation has reason to be proud of them.

In other countries they speak of nobility and courtesy, in London they practise it.

Applause is the spur of noble minds, the end and aim of weak ones.

We become like that which we love. If we love what is base, we become base; but if we love what is noble, we become noble.

The scrupulous and the just, the noble, humane, and devoted natures; the unselfish and the intelligent may begin a movement – but it passes away from them. They are not the leaders of a revolution. They are its victims.

Art is the symbol of the two noblest human efforts: to construct and to refrain from destruction.

Virtue is the truest nobility.

I had always looked upon the search for the absolute as the noblest and most worth while task of science.