To give a reason for anything is to breed a doubt of it.

Some people break promises for the pleasure of breaking them.

We often choose a friend as we do a mistress - for no particular excellence in themselves, but merely from some circumstance that flatters our self-love.

An honest man speaks the truth, though it may give offence; a vain man, in order that it may.

Prosperity is a great teacher; adversity a greater.

Do not keep on with a mockery of friendship after the substance is gone - but part, while you can part friends. Bury the carcass of friendship: it is not worth embalming.

As is our confidence, so is our capacity.

Almost every sect of Christianity is a perversion of its essence, to accommodate it to the prejudices of the world.

Love turns, with a little indulgence, to indifference or disgust; hatred alone is immortal.

Rules and models destroy genius and art.

There are no rules for friendship. It must be left to itself. We cannot force it any more than love.

You know more of a road by having traveled it than by all the conjectures and descriptions in the world.

A scholar is like a book written in a dead language. It is not every one that can read in it.

Good temper is one of the greatest preservers of the features.

The smallest pain in our little finger gives us more concern than the destruction of millions of our fellow beings.

Grace has been defined as the outward expression of the inward harmony of the soul.

If you think you can win, you can win. Faith is necessary to victory.

The soul of a journey is liberty, perfect liberty, to think, feel, do just as one pleases.

There is no prejudice so strong as that which arises from a fancied exemption from all prejudice.

Those who speak ill of the spiritual life, although they come and go by day, are like the smith's bellows: they take breath but are not alive.