“By what strange law of mind is it that an idea long overlooked, and trodden under foot as a useless stone, suddenly sparkles out in new light, as a discovered diamond?”

One part of the science of living is to learn just what our own responsibility is, and to let other people’s alone.

Friendships are discovered rather than made.

There are in this world two kinds of natures, – those that have wings, and those that have feet, – the winged and the walking spirits. The walking are the logicians; the winged are the instinctive and poetic.

It isn’t mere love and good-will that is needed in a sick-room; it needs knowledge and experience.

Let us never doubt everything that ought to happen is going to happen.

No ornament of a house can compare with books; they are constant company in a room, even when you are not reading them.

Intemperance in eating is one of the most fruitful of all causes of disease and death.

General rules will bear hard on particular cases.

Let us resolve: First, to attain the grace of silence; second, to deem all fault finding that does no good a sin; third, to practice the grade and virtue of praise.

There is more done with pens than with swords.

People who hate trouble generally get a good deal of it.

When you get into a tight place, and everything goes against you till it seems as if you couldn’t hold on a minute longer, never give up then, for that ‘s just the place and time that the tide’ll turn.

Common sense is seeing things as they are; and doing things as they ought to be.

O, ye who visit the distressed, do ye know that everything your money can buy, given with a cold, averted face, is not worth one honest tear shed in real sympathy?

The truth is the kindest thing we can give folks in the end.

So subtle is the atmosphere of opinion that it will make itself felt without words.

The dimmed outlines of phenomenal things all merge into one another unless we put on the focusing-glass of theory, and screw it up sometimes to one pitch of definition and sometimes to another, so as to see down into different depths through the great millstone of the world.

The events that I have attended to mark my Diamond Jubilee have been a humbling experience. It has touched me deeply to see so many thousands of families, neighbors and friends celebrating together in such a happy atmosphere.

The questions are diamonds you hold in the light.

I’m a dirt person. I trust the dirt. I don’t trust diamonds and gold.

I see them in my audience all the time, with the fur coat, a woman whose hand is always out front, or the two fingers are on the cheek to show her diamond. I don’t have anything against that.

I think it’s fun to look at people with big diamonds.

I would travel with a suitcase full of diamonds and take them from point A to point B.

I used to bodyguard for Muhammad Ali, Leon Spinks, Sugar Ray Leonard. I used to bodyguard a lot of diamond merchants.