Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn, whatever state I may be in, therein to be content.

They took away what should have been my eyes (but I remembered Milton's Paradise). They took away what should have been my ears, (Beethoven came and wiped away my tears) They took away what should have been my tongue, (but I had talked with god when I was young) He would not let them take away my soul, possessing that I still possess the whole.

When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long in disappointment and bitterness at the closed door that we do not expectantly look for and therefore see with pleasure and gratitude the one which has been opened for us.

I trust, and I recognize the beneficence of the power which we all worship as supreme- Order, Fate, the Great Spirit, Nature, God. I recognize this power in the sun that makes all things grow and keeps life afoot. I make a friend of this indefinable force…this is my religion of optimism.

We still have it in our power to rise above the fears, imagined and real, and to shoulder the great burdens which destiny has placed upon us, not for our country alone, but for the benefit of all the world. That is the only destiny worthy of America.

The attempt to suppress an idea has always and everywhere proved a failure.

True friends never apart maybe in distance but never in heart