Reflect upon your present blessings of which every man has many - not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.
Charles Dickens

It is a pleasant thing to reflect upon, and furnishes a complete answer to those who contend for the gradual degeneration of the human species, that every baby born into the world is a finer one than the last.
Charles Dickens

A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other.
Charles Dickens

Do you spell it with a "V" or a "W"?' inquired the judge. 'That depends upon the taste and fancy of the speller, my Lord'.
Charles Dickens

In real life, unlike in Shakespeare, the sweetness of the rose depends upon the name it bears. Things are not only what they are. They are, in very important respects, what they seem to be.
Hubert H. Humphrey

I believe in only one thing: liberty; but I do not believe in liberty enough to want to force it upon anyone.
H. L. Mencken

There are joys which long to be ours. God sends ten thousands truths, which come about us like birds seeking inlet; but we are shut up to them, and so they bring us nothing, but sit and sing awhile upon the roof, and then fly away.
Henry Ward Beecher

It is one of the severest tests of friendship to tell your friend his faults. So to love a man that you cannot bear to see a stain upon him, and to speak painful truth through loving words, that is friendship.
Henry Ward Beecher

What we call wisdom is the result of all the wisdom of past ages. Our best institutions are like young trees growing upon the roots of the old trunks that have crumbled away.
Henry Ward Beecher

The humblest individual exerts some influence, either for good or evil, upon others.
Henry Ward Beecher

The babe at first feeds upon the mother's bosom, but it is always on her heart.
Henry Ward Beecher

A physician is not angry at the intemperance of a mad patient, nor does he take it ill to be railed at by a man in fever. Just so should a wise man treat all mankind, as a physician does his patient, and look upon them only as sick and extravagant.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca

We can be thankful to a friend for a few acres, or a little money; and yet for the freedom and command of the whole earth, and for the great benefits of our being, our life, health, and reason, we look upon ourselves as under no obligation.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca

True happiness is... to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca

The gambling known as business looks with austere disfavor upon the business known as gambling.
Ambrose Bierce

Consult: To seek approval for a course of action already decided upon.
Ambrose Bierce

Forgetfulness - a gift of God bestowed upon debtors in compensation for their destitution of conscience.
Ambrose Bierce

Trial. A formal inquiry designed to prove and put upon record the blameless characters of judges, advocates and jurors.
Ambrose Bierce

Convent - a place of retirement for women who wish for leisure to meditate upon the sin of idleness.
Ambrose Bierce

I had the blues because I had no shoes until upon the street, I met a man who had no feet.
Denis Waitley