Worse than being blind would be to be able to see but not have any vision.

If you look toward the sunshine, you will never see the shadows.

For my part, I wish, with Mr. Howells, that the literature of the past might be purged of all that is ugly and barbarous in it, although I should object as much as any one to having these great works weakened or falsified.

I am beginning to suspect all elaborate and special systems of education. They seem to me to be built up on the supposition that every child is a kind of idiot who must be taught to think. Whereas, if the child is left to himself, he will think more and better, if less showily.

Your success and happiness lie in you. External conditions are the accidents of life, its outer trappings.

Truly I have looked in the very heart of darkness and refused to yield to its paralyzing influence, but in spirit I am one of those who walk the morning.

A man can't make a place for himself in the sun if he keeps taking refuge under the family tree.