If you refuse directions from an elder, you will walk until sunset.

Age is not better, hardly so well, qualified for an instructor as youth, for it has not profited so much as it has lost.

The compensation of a very early success is a conviction that life is a romantic matter. In the best sense one stays young.

Vigor is found in the man who has not yet grown old, and discretion in the man who is not too young.

Age in a virtuous person, of either sex, carries in it an authority which makes it preferable to all the pleasures of youth.

Cast me not off in the time of old age; forsake me not when my strength faileth.

The wiser mind mourns less for what age takes away than what it leaves behind.

We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it—and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove lid again—and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one any more.

Hold thought steadfastly to the enduring, the good, and the true, and you will bring these into your experience proportionately to their occupancy of your thoughts.

To appreciate the beauty of a snowflake, it is necessary to stand out in the cold.

Much reading is an oppression of the mind, and extinguishes the natural candle, which is the reason of so many senseless scholars in the world.

What we have once enjoyed we can never lose. All that we love deeply becomes a part of us.

There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story.

No one can draw more out of things, books included, than he already knows. A man has no ears for that to which experience has given him no access.

Natural abilities are like natural plants, that need pruning by study; and studies themselves do give forth directions too much at large, except they be bounded in by experience.

Individuals are the sum of their unique experiences, challenges, and accomplishments. What matters is not the barriers they face, but how they choose to confront them. And their race is not to blame for everything—good or bad—that happens in their lives.

The most crucial use of knowledge and education is to understand the importance of developing a good heart.

He who has so little knowledge of human natures as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition will waste his life in fruitless efforts.

Teach the ignorant as much as you can; society is culpable in not providing a free education for all and it must answer for the night which it produces. If the soul is left in darkness sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but he who causes the darkness.

They [the Americans] have all a lively faith in the perfectibility of man, they judge that the diffusion of knowledge must necessarily be advantageous, and the consequences of ignorance fatal; they all consider society as a body in a state of improvement, humanity as a changing scene, in which nothing is, or ought to be, permanent; and they admit that what appears to them today to be good, may be superseded by something better tomorrow.

The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.

No power and no treasure can outweigh the extension of our knowledge.

Cherish that which is within you, and shut off that which is without; for much knowledge is a curse.

The desire of power in excess caused the angels to fall; the desire of knowledge in excess caused man to fall.

Wisdom is nothing but a preparation of the soul, a capacity, a secret art of thinking, feeling and breathing thoughts of unity at every moment of life.

You are a fool in four letters, my son.

All things are filled full of signs, and it is a wise man who can learn about one thing from another.

Grant me, O Lord my God, a mind to know you, a heart to seek you, wisdom to find you, conduct pleasing to you, faithful perseverance in waiting for you, and a hope of finally embracing you. Amen.