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To disappoint a friend is unpleasing; and he that forms expectations like yours, must be disappointed.

Even grief, that passion to which the virtuous and tender mind is particularly subject, will be obviated or alleviated by the same thoughts.

The disturbers of our happiness, in this world, are our desires, our griefs, and our fears; and to all these, the consideration of mortality is a certain and adequate remedy.

A long life may be passed without finding a friend in whose understanding and virtue we can equally confide, and whose opinion we can value at once for its justness and sincerity.

Friends are often chosen for similitude of manners, and therefore each palliates the other's failings, because they are his own.

Evil is uncertain in the same degree as good, and for the reason that we ought not to hope too securely, we ought not to fear with too much dejection.

Sorrow is a kind of rust of the soul, which every new idea contributes in its passage to scour away.

Futurity is the proper abode of hope and fear, with all their train and progeny of subordinate apprehensions and desires.

A man must have the courage to be himself, and not the shadow or the echo of another.

A man must so train his habits as to rely upon his own powers and depend upon his own courage in moments of emergency.

Courage may be displayed in everyday life as well as in historic fields of action.

Courage, combined with energy and perseverance, will overcome difficulties apparently insurmountable.

Energy of temperament, with a moderate degree of wisdom, will carry a man further than any amount of intellect without it.

Difficulties may intimidate the weak, but they act only as a wholesome stimulus to men of resolution and valour.

Energy enables a man to force his way through irksome drudgery and dry details, and carries him onward and upward in every station in life.

Failure in any good cause is, however, honourable, whilst success in any bad cause is merely infamous.

In the pursuit of even the highest branches of human inquiry, the commoner qualities are found the most useful

Necessity, oftener than facility, has been the mother of invention; and the most prolific school of all has been the school of difficulty.

Patience lies at the root of all pleasures, as well as of all powers.

Such biographies increase a man's self-reliance by demonstrating what men can be, and what they can do; fortifying his hopes and elevating his aims in life.

The mere drudgery undergone by some men in carrying on their undertakings has been something extraordinary, but the drudgery they regarded as the price of success.

The road to success may be steep to climb, and it puts to the proof the energies of him who would reach the summit.

What is done in business must be well done; for it is better to accomplish perfectly a small amount of work, than to half-do ten times as much.

With perseverance, the very odds and ends of time may be worked up into results of the greatest value.

Work educates the body, as study educates the mind; and that is the best state of society in which there is some work for every man's leisure, and some leisure for every man's work.