You must have a genius for charity as well as for anything else.

Do not despair of life. You have no doubt force enough to overcome your obstacles. Think of the fox prowling through wood and field in a winter night for something to satisfy his hunger. Notwithstanding cold and the hounds and traps, his race survives. I do not believe any of them ever committed suicide.

I do not know how to distinguish between waking life and a dream. Are we not always living the life that we imagine we are?

We must walk consciously only part way toward our goal, and then leap in the dark to our success.

Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end, an end which it was already but too easy to arrive at; as railroads lead to Boston or New York. We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate.

We do not learn much from learned books, but from true, sincere, human books, from frank and honest biographies.

Our sadness is not sad, but our cheap joys.