The tree of Knowledge is a Tree of Knowledge of good and evil.

Many expressions in the New Testament come naturally to the lips of all Protestants, and it furnishes the most pregnant and practical texts. There is no harmless dreaming, no wise speculation in it, but everywhere a substratum of good sense. It never reflects, but it repents. There is no poetry in it, we may say, nothing regarded in the light of beauty merely, but moral truth is its object. All mortals are convicted by its conscience.

Whatever is, and is not ashamed to be, is good.

There is a slumbering subterranean fire in nature which never goes out, and which no cold can chill.

If I am not I, who will be?

However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is. You may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poor-house.

An efficient and valuable man does what he can, whether the community pay him for it or not.