Warmth and tenderness of heart, with an affectionate, open manner, will beat all the clearness of head in the World, for attraction. The qualities which are the most attractive before dinner sometimes become the least so in the evening. Games prevent honest, intimate, and open relationships between the players. Yet people play them because they fill up time, provoke attention, reinforce early opinions about self and others, and fulfill a sense of destiny.

A person is worthwhile because they are human. One does not have to earn that worth. If an individual does not measure up to his or her ideal self, that person may develop extreme feelings of inferiority, perhaps even an inferiority complex, a sense of complete worthless that lasts for their whole life. Both inferiority feelings and the feeling that you are competent to deal with the World take a long time and much practice to develop.

Benevolence is the duty of one who aspires to wisdom. It is wonderful and delightful to think how long a good man’s beneficence may be potent, even after his enlightenment. Few people are so perfect as not to err sometimes; and if you are convinced of your errors, you will be more cautious how you give way to them a second time.

First of all things in the World a man must be a man, with all the grace and vigor and, if possible, all the beauty of the body. Then he must be a gentleman, with all the grace, the vigor, the good taste of the mind. And then with both of these, no matter what his creed, his dogmas, his superstitions, his religion, with both of these he must try to live a beautiful life of their spirit.

He is just what a young man ought to be, sensible, good humored, lively; and I never saw such happy manners, so much ease, with such perfect breeding! He is also handsome, which a young man ought likewise to be, if he possibly can. His character is thereby complete.

Affectation of candor is common enough, one meets it everywhere. However, to be candid without ostentation or design, to take the good of everybody’s character and make it still better, and say nothing of the bad, belongs to you alone. We seldom appear considerable to others when we appear of no consequence to ourselves. There is a higher sort of bravery, the bravery of self-control.

Men are endowed with every gradation of course, from the calm energy of reflection, which is rendered still more effective by physical firmness, to the headlong precipitation of reckless spirit; from the resolution that grows more imposing and more respectable, as there is greater occasion for its exercise, to the fearful and ill directed energies of despair.

Courage is a virtue; passion is a vice; passion, therefore, cannot be courage. It seems to me that if we are going to live sanely, then we must respect and be sensitive to differences, realizing that no two individuals are alike, and that if we really understand someone, we understand how he or she differs from us.

The youthful heart is ready to believe that what it wishes will happen. Alas, how doubly sharp does this readiness render the barb of disappointment. These birds which tell us news are seldom very credible, and are often not very creditable. You must take a bird’s word for what it may be worth. Fortune is a tender parent, and often doth more for her favorite offspring than either they deserve or wish.