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

Tolerance is the first principle of community; it is the spirit which conserves the best that all men think.

I have walked with people whose eyes are full of light but who see nothing in sea or sky, nothing in city streets, nothing in books. It were far better to sail forever in the night of blindness with sense, and feeling, and mind, than to be content with the mere act of seeing. The only lightless dark is the night of darkness in ignorance and insensibility.

I regard philanthropy as a tragic apology for wrong conditions under which human beings live.

No pessimist ever discovered the secrets of the stars.

Where once stood the steadfast pines, great, beautiful, sweet, my hand touched raw, moist stumps. All about lay broken branches, like the antlers of stricken deer. The fragrant, piled-up sawdust swirled and tumbled about me. An unreasoning resentment flashed through me at the ruthless destruction of the beauty that I love.

Death is no more than passing from one room into another. But there's a difference for me, you know. Because in that other room I shall be able to see.