Praise is sunshine; it warms, it inspires, it promotes growth; blame and rebuke are rain and hail; they beat down and bedraggle, even though they may at times be necessary.

For how imperiously, how coolly, in disregard of all one’s feelings, does the hard, cold, uninteresting course of daily realities move on! Still we must eat, and drink, and sleep, and wake again, - still bargain, buy, sell, ask and answer questions, - pursue, in short, a thousand shadows, though all interest in them be over; the cold, mechanical habit of living remaining, after all vital interest in it has fled.

Care and labor are as much correlated to human existence as shadow is to light.

It is one mark of a superior mind to understand and be influenced by the superiority of others.

Sweet souls around us watch us still, press nearer to our side; Into our thoughts, into our prayers, with gentle helpings glide.

In the gates of eternity the black hand and the white hand hold each other with equal clasp.

It is no merit in the sorrowful that they weep, or to the oppressed and smothering that they gasp and struggle, not to me, that I must speak for the oppressed - who cannot speak for themselves.