The true test of a character is to face hard conditions with the determination to make them better.

So long as you can sweeten another's pain, life is not in vain.

I believe humility is a virtue, but I prefer not to use it unless it is absolutely necessary.

It is with a kind of fear that I begin to write the history of my life.

Believe, when you are most unhappy, that there is something for you to do in the world. So long as you can sweeten another's pain, life is not in vain.

I demand that the world be good, and lo, it obeys. I proclaim the world good, and facts range themselves to prove my proclamation overwhelmingly true. To what good I open the doors of my being, and jealously shut them against what is bad. Such is the force of this beautiful and willful conviction, it carries itself in the face of all opposition. I am never discouraged by absence of good. I never can be argued into hopelessness. Doubt and mistrust are the mere panic of timid imagination, which the steadfast heart will conquer, and the large mind transcend.

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