The bookshelf, like the book, has become an integral part of civilization as we know it, its presence in a home practically defining what it means to be civilized, educated, and refined.
The essence of greatness is neglect of the self.
Human improvement is from within outward.
You cannot dream yourself into a character; you must hammer and forge yourself one.
As we advance in life, we learn the limits of our abilities.
Wild animals never kill for sport. Man is the only one to whom the torture and death of his fellow creatures is amusing in itself.
The practical effect of a belief is the real test of its soundness.
Put a rogue in the limelight and he will act like an honest man.
The best thing we have is sleep, of course, and what is sleep except the putting aside of everything tentative for another interval of final and everlasting truth? Sleep isn't dying, but it is certainly keeping in tough with it.
Only an indirect method is effective. We do nothing if we have not first drawn back.
We reap a reward merely in the act of helping others. We never know how, or if, that reward will come back to us. Helping is the reward; none other is needed nor better.