(1820 – 1904)

Kindness – a language which the dumb can speak, and the deaf can understand.

A failure establishes only this, that our determination to succeed was not strong enough.

Affliction, like the iron-smith, shapes as it smites.

Our first and last love is – self-love.

A sound discretion is not so much indicated by never making a mistake as by never repeating it.

We fear things in proportion to our ignorance of them.

One who is contented with what he has done will never become famous for what he will do. He has laid down to die, and the grass is already growing over him.

Contentment is not happiness. An oyster may be contented.

We trifle when we assign limits to our desires, since nature hath set none.

There is great beauty in going through life without anxiety or fear. Half our fears are baseless, and the other half discreditable.

Doubt whom you will, but never yourself.

False friends are like our shadow, keeping close to us while we walk in the sunshine, but leaving us the instant we cross into the shade.

Tearless grief bleeds inwardly.

No man is happy without a delusion of some kind. Delusions are as necessary to our happiness as realities.

It is only an error in judgment to make a mistake, but it shows infirmity of character to adhere to it when discovered.

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

Fame – a few words upon a tombstone, and the truth of those not to be depended on.

The small courtesies sweeten life; the greater ennoble it.

Music is the fourth great material want, first food, then clothes, then shelter, then music

Sensitiveness is closely allied to egotism; and excessive sensibility is only another name for morbid self-consciousness. The cure for tender sensibilities is to make more of our objects and less of our selves.

When all else is lost, the future still remains.