“Purposes, like eggs, unless they be hatched into action, will run into rottenness.”

If we opened our minds to enjoyment, we might find tranquil pleasures spread about us on every side. We might live with the angels that visit us on every sunbeam, and sit with the fairies who wait on every flower.

It is a mistake to suppose that men succeed through success; they much oftener succeed through failures. Precept, study, advice, and example could never have taught them so well as failure has done.

The apprenticeship of difficulty is one which the greatest of men have had to serve.

The possession of a library, or the free use of it, no more constitutes learning, than the possession of wealth constitutes generosity.

Cecil’s dispatch of business was extraordinary, his maxim being, “The shortest way to do many things is to do only one thing at once.”

Alexander the Great valued learning so highly, that he used to say he was more indebted to Aristotle for giving him knowledge than to his father Philip for life.

The women of the poorer classes make sacrifices, and run risks, and bear privations, and exercise patience and kindness to a degree that the world never knows of, and would scarcely believe even if it did know.

The truest politeness comes of sincerity.

Luck whines; labor whistles.

He who labours not, cannot enjoy the reward of labour.

Childhood is like a mirror, which reflects in after life the images first presented to it.

One might almost fear,” writes a thoughtful woman, “seeing how the women of to-day are lightly stirred up to run after some new fashion or faith, that heaven is not so near to them as it was to their mothers and grandmothers.

Self-control is only courage under another form.

Riches are oftener an impediment than a stimulus to action; and in many cases they are quite as much a misfortune as a blessing.

The tiniest bits of opinion sown in the minds of children in private life afterwards issue forth to the world, and become its public opinion; for nations are gathered out of nurseries.

A fig-tree looking on a fig-tree becometh fruitful,” says the Arabian proverb. And so it is with children; their first great instructor is example.