Cheerfulness and contentment are great beautifiers, and are fatuous preservers of youthful looks

I feel an earnest and humble desire, and shall till I die, to increase the stock of harmless cheerfulness

I mean a man whose hopes and aims may sometimes lie (as most men's sometimes do, I dare say) above the ordinary level, but to whom the ordinary level will be high enough after all if it should prove to be a way of usefulness and good service leading to no other. All generous spirits are ambitious, I suppose, but the ambition that calmly trusts itself to such a road, instead of spasmodically trying to fly over it, is of the kind I care for.

Take nothing on its looks; take everything on evidence. There's no better rule.

Not that you're not youthful. You're very youthful, John. But he looks like he's 18!

No one who can read, ever looks at a book, even unopened on a shelf, like one who cannot.