“The shortest way to do many things is to do only one thing at once.”

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.

Life will always be to a large extent what we ourselves make it.

Good character is property. It is the noblest of all possessions.

Man cannot aspire if he looked down; if he rise, he must look up.

Riches do not constitute any claim to distinction. It is only the vulgar who admire riches as riches.

Example teaches better than precept. It is the best modeler of the character of men and women. To set a lofty example is the richest bequest a man can leave behind him.

The highest culture is not obtained from the teacher when at school or college, so much as by our ever diligent self-education when we become men.

This extraordinary metal, the soul of every manufacture, and the mainspring perhaps of civilised society. Of iron.

Men must necessarily be the active agents of their own well-being and well-doing they themselves must in the very nature of things be their own best helpers.

Doubtless there are things in nature which have not yet been seen. If an artist discovers them, he opens the way for his successors.

If we cannot find a way, we will make one.

Always act in such a way as to secure the love of your neighbour.

I am one of the most irresponsible beings that ever lived. Irresponsibility is part of my invisibility; any way you face it, it is a denial. But to whom can I be responsible, and why should I be, when you refuse to see me?

The way to resume is to resume. It is the only way. To resume.

I shall always be consistent and never change my ways so long as I am in my senses; but for the sake of precedent the Senate should beware of binding itself to support the acts of any man, since he might through some mischance suffer a change.

I am writing for myself and strangers. This is the only way that I can do it.

And my problem was that I always tried to go in everyone’s way but my own.