What you are lies with you. If you are lazy, and accept your lot, you may live in it. If you are willing to work, you can write your name anywhere you choose, among the only ones who live beyond the grave in this world, the people who write books that help, make exquisite music, carve statues, paint pictures, and work for others. Never mind the calico dress, and the coarse shoes. Work at you books, and before long you will hear yesterday's tormentors boasting that they were once classmates of yours.

Sometimes it seems to me that the more we get hurt in this world the decenter it makes us.

Is he well educated?" "Yes, I think so, as far as he's gone," I answered. "Of course he will go on being educated every day of his life, same as father. He says it is all rot about 'finishing' your education. You never do. You learn more important things each day.

the friend in need is the one who is the friend in deed; ... if people were not friends in need, there was every likelihood that they never would be friends again in any conditions that might obtain.

Nature can be trusted to work her own miracle in the heart of any man whose daily task keeps him alone among her sights, sounds and silences.

I do not know why it is the fate of the world always to want something different from what life gives them.

Do you know that being a stranger is the hardest thing that can happen to any one in all this world?