"Life isn't like a book. Life isn't logical or sensible or orderly. Life is a mess most of the time. And theology must be lived in the midst of that mess."

"Men's arguments often prove nothing but their wishes."

"Commerce flourishes by circumstances, precarious, transitory, contingent, almost as the winds and waves that bring it to our shores."

"Times of great calamity and confusion have been productive for the greatest minds. The purest ore is produced from the hottest furnace. The brightest thunder-bolt is elicited from the darkest storm."

"He that has never suffered extreme adversity knows not the full extent of his own depravation."

"There are three modes of bearing the ills of life, by indifference, by philosophy, and by religion."

"Men spend their lives in anticipation in determining to be vastly happy at some period when they have time. But the present time has one advantage over every other - it is our own.... We may lay in a stock of pleasures as we would lay in a stock of wine but if we defer the tasting of them too long we shall find that both are soured by age."

"We are sure to be losers when we quarrel with ourselves it is civil war."

"Happiness, that grand mistress of the ceremonies in the dance of life, impels us through all its mazes and meanderings, but leads none of us by the same route."

"Physical courage, which despises all danger, will make a man brave in one way; and moral courage, which despises all opinion, will make a man brave in another."

"Posthumous charities are the very essence of selfishness when bequeathed by those who, even alive, would part with nothing."

"Our admiration of fine writing will always be in proportion to its real difficulty and its apparent ease."

"The present time has one advantage over every other - it is our own."

"I'm aiming by the time I'm fifty to stop being an adolescent."

"Most of our misfortunes are comments of our friends upon them."

"In life we shall find many men that are great, and some that are good, but very few men that are both great and good."

"Books, like friends, should be few and well chosen. Like friends, too, we should return to them again and again for, like true friends, they will never fail us - never cease to instruct - never cloy."

"Much may be done in those little shreds and patches of time which every day produces, and which most men throw away."

"A house may draw visitors but it is the possessor alone that can detain them."

"Marriage is a feast where the grace is sometimes better than the dinner."

"Men are born with two eyes, but with one tongue, in order that they should see twice as much as they say."

"Pure truth like pure gold has been found unfit for circulation because men have discovered that it is far more convenient to adulterate the truth than to refine themselves."

"To be obliged to beg our daily happiness from others bespeaks a more lamentable poverty than that of him who begs his daily bread."

"A hug is worth a thousand words. A friend is worth more.'True friendship is like sound health; the value of it is seldom known until it be lost."

"Friendship often ends in love; but love in friendship - never."

"The study of mathematics, like the Nile, begins in minuteness but ends in magnificence."

"A windmill is eternally at work to accomplish one end although it shifts with every variation of the weather cock and assumes 10 different positions in a day."

"He that has energy enough to root out a vice should go further, and try to plant a virtue in its place."

"True friendship is like sound health; the value of it is seldom known until it is lost."

"If you cannot inspire a woman with love of you, fill her above the brim with love of herself; all that runs over will be yours."

"Avarice has ruined more souls than extravagance."

"Nothing so completely baffles one who is full of trick and duplicity himself, than straightforward and simple integrity in another."

"Power will intoxicate the best hearts, as wine the strongest heads. No man is wise enough, nor good enough to be trusted with unlimited power."

"True friendhip is like sound health: the value of it is seldom know until it is lost."

"The firmest friendships have been formed in mutual adversity, as iron is most strongly united by the fiercest flame"

"We owe almost all our knowledge not to those who have agreed but to those who have differed."

"The three great apostles of practical atheism that make converts without persecuting and retain them without preaching are Wealth Health and Power."

"We ask advice, but we mean approbation."

"Moderation is the inseparable companion of wisdom, but with it genius has not even a nodding acquaintance."

"That cowardice is incorrigible which the love of power cannot overcome."

"He that has cut the claws of the lion will not feel quite secure until he has also drawn his teeth."

"Times of general calamity and confusion have ever been productive of the greatest minds. The purest ore is produced from the hottest furnace and the brightest thunderbolt is elicited from the darkest storms."

"Of present fame think little, and of future less; the praises that we receive after we are buried, like the flowers that are strewed over our grave, may be gratifying to the living, but they are nothing to the dead."

"In religion as in politics it so happens that we have less charity for those who believe half our creed, than for those who deny the whole of it."

"Happiness ... leads none of us by the same route."

"Constant success shows us but one side of the world; adversity brings out the reverse of the picture."

"Corruption is like a ball of snow, once it's set a rolling it must increase."

"There are some frauds so well conducted that it would be stupidity not to be deceived by them."

"The two most precious things this side of the grave are our reputation and our life. But it is to be lamented that the most contemptible whisper may deprive us of the one, and the weakest weapon of the other."

"Ladies of Fashion starve their happiness to feed their vanity, and their love to feed their pride."