Passions weaken, but habits strengthen, with age, and it is the great task of youth to set the current of habit and to form the tastes which are most productive of happiness in life.

Anxiety and Ennui are the Scylla and Charybdis on which the bark of human happiness is most often wrecked.

There are times in the lives of most of us, when we would have given all the world to be as we were but yesterday, though that yesterday had passed over us unappreciated and unenjoyed.

The simple record of these three short years of active life has done more to regenerate and soften mankind than all the discourses of philosophers and all the exhortations of moralists.

The unweary, unostentatious, and inglorious crusade of England against slavery may probably be regarded as among the three or four perfectly virtuous pages comprised in the history of nations.

In proportion to its power, Protestantism has been as persecuting as Catholicism.

The contraction of theological influence has been at once the best measure, and the essential condition of intellectual advance.

One of the most important lessons that experience teaches is that, on the whole, success depends more upon character than upon either intellect or fortune.

The Augustinian doctrine of the damnation of unbaptized infants and the Calvinistic doctrine of reprobation . . . surpass in atrocity any tenets that have ever been admitted into any pagan creed.

Whenever the clergy were at the elbow of the civil arm, no matter whether they were Catholic or Protestant, persecution was the result.

There have certainly been many periods in history when virtue was more rare than under the Caesars; but there has probably never been a period when vice was more extravagant or uncontrolled.

The best investments are in things you cannot buy.

Fame is such a waste. It can't even be recycled.

I don't like the fact that doctors are referred to as practicing.

Spiritual maturity does not mean that we will never make wrong plans. In fact, spiritual maturity often means having the courage to admit we've made the wrong plans.

Call me old-fashioned, but I believe that morality is not just a matter of opinion.

If Fred Astaire is the Cary Grant of dance, I'm the Marlon Brando.

Always good to have one crazy in the family ... It takes the pressure off everybody else.

You can't be happy, if you're not free and you're not fulfilling yourself.

Looking good and dressing well is a necessity. Having a purpose in life is not.

Art is sometimes likened to a mirror... an expression of universal human truth, executed with a degree of skill.