The only failure one should fear, is not hugging to the purpose they see as best.

I don't feel sure about doing good in any way now; everything seems like going on a mission to a people whose language I don't know.

We could never have loved the earth so well if we had had no childhood in it.

What greater thing is there for two human souls than to feel that they are joined - to strengthen each other - to be at one with each other in silent unspeakable memories.

I will to make life less bitter for a few within my reach.

Perspective, as its inventor remarked, is a beautiful thing. What horrors of damp huts, where human beings languish, may not become picturesque through aerial distance! What hymning of cancerous vices may we not languish over as sublimest art in the safe remoteness of a strange language and artificial phrase! Yet we keep a repugnance to rheumatism and other painful effects when presented in our personal experience.

In spite of his practical ability, some of his experience had petrified into maxims and quotations.