“It is a grand thing to rise in the world. The ambition to do so is the very salt of the earth. It is the parent of all enterprise, and the cause of all improvement.”

And though it is much to be a nobleman, it is more to be a gentleman.

The greatest mistake any man ever made is to suppose that the good things of the world are not worth the winning.

Such young men are often awkward, ungainly, and not yet formed in their gait; they straggle with their limbs, and are shy; words do not come to them with ease, when words are required, among any but their accustomed associates.

A small dainty task, if it be really daily, will beat the labours of a spasmodic Hercules.

It’s dogged as does it. It ain’t thinking about it.

The habit of reading is the only one I know in which there is no alloy. It lasts when all other pleasures fade.

But then the pastors and men of God can only be human,–cannot altogether be men of God; and so they have oppressed us, and burned us, and tortured us, and hence come to love palaces, and fine linen, and purple, and, alas, sometimes, mere luxury and idleness.

A small daily task, if it be really daily, will beat the labours of a spasmodic Hercules.

Above all else, never think you’re not good enough.

The true picture of life as it is, if it could be adequately painted, would show men what they are, and how they might rise, not, indeed to perfection, but one step first, and then another on the ladder.

Make all men equal to-day, and God has so created them that they shall be all unequal to-morrow.

Neither money nor position can atone to me for low birth.

When a man is ill nothing is so important to him as his own illness.

It has become a certainty now that if you will only advertise sufficiently you may make a fortune by selling anything.

Passionate love, I take it, rarely lasts long, and is very troublesome while it does last. Mutual esteem is very much more valuable.

A man’s mind will very gradually refuse to make itself up until it is driven and compelled by emergency.