Many a woman whom a mouse would frighten out of her wits would not shrink from assisting in terrible surgical operations in our city or war hospitals, and many an officer and soldier who would walk up to the cannon's mouth without a tremor in battle, would not dare to say his soul was his own in a society parlor.
Many a great statesman has quailed before the ringer of scorn of a fellow-Congressman, and has been completely cowed by a hiss from the gallery or a ridiculing paragraph in a newspaper.

We all have tender spots, weak spots, and a man can never know his strength who does not study his weaknesses.
"Violent passions and ardent feelings are seldom found united with complete self-command; but when they are they form the strongest possible character, for there is all the power of clear thought and cool judgment impelled by the resistless energy of feeling.

This combination Washington possessed; for in his impetuosity there was no foolish rashness, and in his passion no injustice.

Besides, whatever violence there might be within, the explosion seldom came to the surface, and when it did it was arrested at once by the stern mandate of his will.

He never lost the mastery of himself in any emergency, and in 'ruling his spirit' showed himself greater than in 'taking a city.' "It is one of the astonishing things in his life that, amid the perfect chaos of feeling into which he was thrown,--amid the distracted counsels and still more distracted affairs that surrounded him,--he never once lost the perfect equilibrium of his own mind.