Our business in life is not to succeed, but to continue to fail in good spirits.

Like a bird singing in the rain, let grateful memories survive in time of sorrow.

That man is a success who has lived well, laughed often and loved much.

His past was fairly blameless; few men could read the rolls of their life with less apprehension; yet he was humbled to the dust by the many ill things he had done, and raised up again into sober and fearful gratitude by the many he had come so near to doing, yet avoided.

The habit of being happy enables one to be freed, or largely freed, from the domination of outward conditions.

It is the history of our kindnesses that alone make this world tolerable. If it were not for that, for the effect of kind words, kind looks, kind letters . . . I should be inclined to think our life a practical jest in the worst possible spirit.