The only way to have a friend is to be one.

Always do what you are afraid to do.

Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.

Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything that is beautiful; for beauty is God’s handwriting—a wayside sacrament. Welcome it in every fair face, in every fair sky, in every fair flower, and thank God for it as a cup of blessing.

Men are what their mothers made them.

All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make, the better.

The Englishman who visits Mount Etna will carry his tea-kettle to the top.

An individual man is a fruit which it cost all the foregoing ages to form and ripen. He is strong, not to do, but to live; not in his arms, but in his heart; not as an agent, but as a fact.

It is only as a man puts off from himself all external support, and stands alone, that I see him to be strong and to prevail.

A feeble man can see the farms that are fenced and tilled, the houses that are built. The strong man sees the possible houses and farms. His eye makes estates as fast as the sun breeds clouds.

Strong men greet war, tempest, hard times. They wish, as Pindar said, to tread the floors of hell, with necessities as hard as iron.

Not gold, but only man can make a people great and strong; men who, for truth and honor’s sake, stand fast and suffer long.

Every man is actually weak, and apparently strong. To himself, he seems weak; to others, formidable.

Our strength grows out of our weaknesses.

Shallow men believe in luck or in circumstance. Strong men believe in cause and effect.

If we live truly, we shall see truly. It is as easy for the strong man to be strong, as it is for the weak to be weak.

We acquire the strength we have overcome.

Do not go where the path may lead; go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.

Our life is an apprenticeship to the truth that around every circle another can be drawn; that there is no end in nature, but every end is a beginning; that there is always another dawn risen on midnoon, and under every deep a lower deep opens.

When I first open my eyes upon the morning meadows and look out upon the beautiful world, I thank God I am alive.

There is no country in which so absolute a homage is paid to wealth. In America there is a touch of shame when a man exhibits the evidences of large property, as if after all it needed apology. But the Englishman has pure pride in his wealth, and esteems it a final certificate. A coarse logic rules throughout all English souls: if you have merit, can you not show it by your good clothes and coach and horses?

The religion of England is part of good-breeding. When you see on the continent the well-dressed Englishman come into his ambassador’s chapel and put his face for silent prayer into his smooth-brushed hat, you cannot help feeling how much national pride prays with him, and the religion of a gentleman.

Cultivate the habit of being grateful for every good thing that comes to you, and to give thanks continuously. And because all things have contributed to your advancement, you should include all things in your gratitude.

You see, it’s all clear, we were meant to be here from the beginning.

A Frenchman may possibly be clean; an Englishman is conscientiously clean.

I find the Englishman to be him of all men who stands firmest in his shoes. They have in themselves what they value in their horses, mettle and bottom.

The Englishman who has lost his fortune is said to have died of a broken heart.

The Frenchman invented the ruffle; the Englishman added the shirt.

Each religious sect has its own physiognomy. The Methodists have acquired a face; the Quakers, a face; the nuns, a face. An Englishman will pick out a dissenter by his manners.

“It is in bad taste,” is the most formidable word an Englishman can pronounce.