“We give our best affections to the beautiful, only our second best to the useful.”

Life is indeed either a rich possession or a poor, according as it is made subservient to noble aims or ignoble pleasures.

Discretion is the salt, and fancy the sugar of life; the one preserves, the other sweetens it.

Great warriors, like great earthquakes, are principally remembered for the mischief they have done.

Give me the character and I will forecast the event.

To vindicate the sanctity of human life by taking it is an outrage upon reason. The spectacle of a human being dangling at the end of a gallows-rope is a degradation of humanity.

If it is a distinction to have written a good book, it is also a disgrace to have written a bad one.

Dignity of position adds to dignity of character, as well as to dignity of carriage. Give us a proud position, and we are impelled to act up to it.

Genius makes its observations in short-hand; talent writes them out at length.

Successful love takes a load off our hearts, and puts it upon our shoulders.

We make way for the man who boldly pushes past us.

Without death in the world, existence in it would soon become, through over-population, the most frightful of curses.

Difficulties, by bracing the mind to overcome them, assist cheerfulness, as exercise assists digestion.

Nothing is so fragile as thought in its infancy; an interruption breaks it: nothing is so powerful, even to overturning empires, when it reaches its maturity.

It is the nature of thought to find its way into action.

When all else is lost, the future still remains.

Courage enlarges, cowardice diminishes resources.

I have been seized by the power of a great affection.

What you don’t owe would never hurt you.

You could think of mindfulness as wise and affectionate attention.

SPIRITUAL EXERCISES whereby to conquer oneself, and order one’s life, without being influenced in one’s decision by any inordinate affection.

Home is a place not only of strong affections, but of entire unreserve; it is life’s undress rehearsal, its backroom, its dressing room.

The Sun, the hearth of affection and life, pours burning love on the delighted earth.

All brave men love; for he only is brave who has affections to fight for, whether in the daily battle of life, or in physical contests.

Caresses, expressions of one sort or another, are necessary to the life of the affections as leaves are to the life of a tree. If they are wholly restrained, love will die at the roots.