If I regarded my life from the point of view of the pessimist, I should be undone. I should seek in vain for the light that does not visit my eyes and the music that does not ring in my ears. I should beg night and day and never be satisfied. I should sit apart in awful solitude, a prey to fear and despair. But since I consider it a duty to myself and to others to be happy, I escape a misery worse than any physical deprivation.

Joy is a spiritual element that gives vicissitudes unity and significance.

Knowledge is happiness, because to have knowledge - broad, deep knowledge - is to know true ends from false, and lofty things from low.

I have never believed that my limitations were in any sense punishments or accidents. If I had held such a view, I could never have expected the strength to overcome them.

Commercial concerns have expanded from family business to corporate wealth which is self-perpetuating and which enlightened statesmen and economists now dread as the most potent oligarchy yet produced.

The idea of brotherhood re-dawns upon the world with a broader significance than the narrow association of members in a sect or creed.

To keep our faces toward chance and behave like free spirits in the presence of fate is strength undefeatable.