This very certain that each man carries in his eye the exact indication of his rank in the immense scale of men, and we are always learning to read it. A complete man should need no auxiliaries to his personal presence.
You take a weakness and start making it stronger.. You don't have to build your strengths - that you already possess... It is your weakness that needs the exercise
The intellect,-that is miraculous! Who has it, has the talisman: his skin and bones, though they were of the color of night, are transparent, and the everlasting stars shine through, with attractive beams.
The delicious faces of children, the beauty of school-girls, "the sweet seriousness of sixteen," the lofty air of well-born, well-bred boys, the passionate histories in the looks and manners of youth and early manhood, and the varied power in all that well-known company that escort us through life,--we know how these forms thrill, paralyze, provoke, inspire, and enlarge us.
Although knaves win in every political struggle, although society seems to be delivered over from the hands of one set of criminals into the hands of another set of criminals, as fast as the government is changed, and the march of civilization is a train of felonies, yet, general ends are somehow answered.
Repose and cheerfulness are the badge of the gentleman - repose in energy. The Greek battle pieces are calm; the heroes, in whatever violent actions engaged, retain a serene aspect.
We believe that the defects of so many perverse and so many frivolous people, who make up society, are organic, and society is a hospital of incurables.