A life that is worth writing at all is worth writing minutely.

In this world a man must either be anvil or hammer.

Fear is the virtue of slaves; but the heart that loveth is willing.

Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears, our faith triumphant o’er our fears, are all with thee – are all with thee!

I feel a kind of reverence for the first books of young authors. There is so much aspiration in them, so much audacious hope and trembling fear, so much of the heart's history, that all errors and shortcomings are for a while lost sight of in the amiable self assertion of youth.

Ambition is so powerful a passion in the human breast, that however high we reach we are never satisfied.

I shot an arrow into the air, It fell to earth, I knew not where; For, so swiftly it flew, the sight Could not follow it in its flight. I breathed a song into the air, It fell to earth, I knew not where; For who has sight so keen and strong, That it can follow the flight of song? Long, long afterward, in an oak I found the arrow, still unbroke; And the song, from beginning to end, I found again in the heart of a friend.