The greatest successes grow out of great failures. In numerous instances the result is better that comes after a series of abortive experiences than it would have been if it had come at once; for all these successive failures induce a skill which is so much additional power working into the final achievement.... The hand that evokes such perfect music from the instrument has often failed in its touch, and bungled among the keys.... Every disappointed effort fences in and indicates the only possible path of success, and makes it easier to find.

Revolution does not insure progress. You may overturn thrones, but what proof that anything better will grow upon the soil?

The wild bird that flies so lone and far has somewhere its nest and brood. A little fluttering heart of love impels its wings, and points its course. There is nothing so solitary as a solitary man.

The church-bells of innumerable sects are all chime-bells to-day, ringing in sweet accordance throughout many lands, and awaking a great joy in the heart of our common humanity.

A man's love for his native land lies deeper than any logical expression, among those pulses of the heart which vibrate to the sanctities of home, and to the thoughts which leap up from his father's graves.

Honor to the idealists, whether philosophers or poets. They have improved us by mingling with our daily pursuits great and transcendent conceptions. They have thrown around our sensual life the grandeur of a better, and drawn us up from contacts with the temporal and the selfish to communion with beauty and truth and goodness.

Character has more effect than anything else. Let a number of loud-talking men take up a particular question, and one man of character, of known integrity and beauty of soul, will outweigh them all in his influence.