Youth is but the painted shell within which, continually growing, lives that wondrous thing the spirit of a man, biding its moment of apparition, earlier in some than in others.

Would you hurt a man keenest strike at his self-love?

As a rule, there is no surer way to the dislike of men than to behave well where they have behaved badly.

Riches take wings, comforts vanish, hope withers away,but love stays with us. Love is God.

Sympathy is in great degree a result of the mood we are in at the moment anger forbids the emotion. On the other hand, it is easiest taken on when we are in a state of most absolute self-satisfaction.

The monuments of the nations are all protests against nothingness after death so are statues and inscriptions so is history.

A man thirty years old, I said to myself, should have his field of life all ploughed, and his planting well done for after that it is summer time.

The happiness of love is in action its test is what one is willing to do for others.

A man is never so on trial as in the moment of excessive good fortune.

Pure wisdom always directs itself towards God the purest wisdom is knowledge of God.

Would you hurt a woman worst, aim at her affections.

The smallest bird cannot light upon the greatest tree without sending a shock to its most distant fiber.

This soldiering thing sadly deadens that very good thing, humanity.

There is no law by which to determine the superiority of nations hence the vanity of the claim, and the idleness of disputes about it. A people risen, run their race, and die either of themselves or at the hands of another, who, succeeding to their power, take possession of their place, and upon their monuments write new names such is history.

To begin a reform, go not into the places of the great and rich go rather to those whose cups of happiness are empty--to the poor and humble.

All calculations based on experience elsewhere, fail in New Mexico.

Repentance must be something more than mere remorse for sins: it comprehends a change of nature befitting heaven.

While craving justice for ourselves, it is never wise to be unjust to others.