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.

It is those who make the least display of their sorrow who mourn the deepest.

Life, whether in this world or any other, is the sum of our attainment, our experience, our character. The conditions are secondary. In what other world shall we be more surely than we are here?

As for environments, the kingliest being ever born in the flesh lay in a manger.

The universe is a vast system of exchange. Every artery of it is in motion, throbbing with reciprocity, from the planet to the rotting leaf.

Death is the condition of higher and more fruitful life.

It is not death to have the body called back to the earth, and dissolved into its kindred elements, and mouldered to dust, and, it may be, turn to daisies, in the grave. But it is death to have the soul paralyzed, its inner life quenched, its faculties dissipated; that is death.