Only the flowing water is pure and sweet. Only the spinning top and the moving bicycle do not fall over. Rest is not found in irregular and purposeless motion, nor is it stagnation; all real and firm rest is to be sought in harmonious action.

He who receives a great many letters demanding answer, sees himself as if engaged in a hopeless struggle of one man against the rest of the world.

There is a Restlessness springing from the consciousness of power not fully utilized, which must be present wherever there is unused power of whatever kind. This is the restlessness of the germ within the seed, struggling upward and downward towards its proper life.it is a striving full of pain, the cutting of tender flesh by the fetters of the captive as he struggles against their pitilessness.

The more we reduce ourselves to machines in the lower things, the more force we shall set free to use in the higher.

You have got to play the game with the cards that have been dealt to you, and it is of no use for you to bewail your fate because you don't hold different ones. Look them over, arrange them, and play. You certainly must play them before you will get any others, and you need never expect to have other people's cards.

We are always getting ready to live, and never having time enough to live.

What we learn for the sake of knowing, we hold; what we learn for the sake of accomplishing some ulterior end, we forget as soon as that end has been gained. This, too, is automatic action in the constitution of the mind itself, and it is fortunate and merciful that it is so, for otherwise our minds would be soon only rubbish-rooms.