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.

I fall, I stand still... I trudge on. I gain a little... I get more eager and climb higher and begin to see the widening horizon. Every struggle is a victory.

To me a lush carpet of pine needles or spongy grass is more welcome than the most luxurious Persian rug.

What a joy it is to feel the soft, springy earth under my feet once more, to follow grassy roads that lead to ferny brooks where I can bathe my fingers in a cataract of rippling notes, or to clamber over a stone wall into green fields that tumble and roll and climb in riotous gladness!

Doubts and mistrust are the mere panic of timid imagination, which the steadfast heart will conquer, and the large mind transcend.

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 am a child of my generation, and I rejoice that I live in such splendidly disturbing times.