Real freedom comes from the mastery, through knowledge, of historic conditions and race character, which makes possible a free and intelligent use of experience for the purpose of progress.

The question for each man to settle is not what he would do if he had the means, time, influence and educational advantages, but what he will do with the things he has.

Genius is intensity of life; an overflowing vitality which floods and fertilizes a continent or a hemisphere of being; which makes a nature many-sided and whole, while most men remain partial and fragmentary.

There is no kind obondage which life lays upon us that may not yield both sweetness and strength; and nothing reveals a man's character more fully than the spirit in which he bears his limitations.

The test of friendship is its fidelity when every charm of fortune and environment has been spent away, and the bare, undraped character alone remains; if love still holds steadfast, and the joy of companionship survives in such an hour, the fellowship becomes a beautiful prophecy of immortality.

The book of the moment often has immense vogue, while the book of the age, which comes in its company from the press, lies unnoticed; but the great book has its revenge. It lives to see its contemporary pushed up shelf by shelf until it finds its final resting-place in the garret or the auction room.

It is better to go down on the great seas which human hearts were made to sail than to rot at the wharves in ignoble anchorage.