Knowledge slowly builds up what Ignorance in an hour pulls down.

Ignorance ... is a painless evil; so, I should think, is dirt, considering the merry faces that go along with it.

What should I do—how should I act now, this very day . . . What she would resolve to do that day did not yet seem quite clear, but something that she could achieve stirred her as with an approaching murmur which would soon gather distinctness.

One's self-satisfaction is an untaxed kind of property which it is very unpleasant to find deprecated.

It is easy to say how we love new friends, and what we think of them, but words can never trace out all the fibers that knit us to the old.

What people do who go into politics I can't think; it drives me almost mad to see mismanagement over only a few hundred acres.

Let my body dwell in poverty, and my hands be as the hands of the toiler; but let my soul be as a temple of remembrance where the treasures of knowledge enter and the inner sanctuary is hope.