We are heirs of the ages because throughout the ages mankind has devised and fashioned new things, and step by step added new conquests to our domain in that incessant contest with nature which means life. But we are decadent heirs if we cannot use the instruments that the ages have put into our hands. The acquisition of these, in the largest scope, is education.

Some people would be discontented in Paradise, others ... are cheerful in a graveyard.

Pessimism is carefully cultivated in some intellectual circles, as if it were a precious plant that the human race could not afford to lose.

We are heirs of the ages because throughout the ages mankind has devised and fashioned new things, and step by step added new conquests to our domain in that incessant contest with nature which means life. But we are decadent heirs if we cannot use the instruments that the ages have put into our hands. The acquisition of these, in the largest scope, is education.

Optimism will grow like a flower if the soil be properly prepared.

Children should not be coddled in their intellectual training any more than in their physical; and though the studies should be made interesting the interest should arise out of the studies themselves. We have bred a generation that cannot digest anything intellectual but tablets of peptonized food. One sees that in the popular papers with their brevity, still increasing in brevity as far as brevity can increase, and in the capacity for thought of our rulers.

Tact is not a small thing; in the battle of life it is more powerful than a bludgeon.