Your honors here may serve you for a time, as it were for an hour, but they will be of no use to you beyond this world. Nobody will have heard a word of your honors in the other life. Your glory, your shame, your ambitions, and all the treasures for which you push hard and sacrifice much will be like wreaths of smoke. For these things, which you mostly seek, and for which you spend your life only tarry with you while you are on this side of the flood.

I read for three things; first, to know what the world has done the last twenty-four hours, and is about to do today; second, for the knowledge that I specially want in my work; and third, for what will bring my mind into a proper mood.

The imagination is the secret and marrow of civilization. It is the very eye of faith.

It is a man dying with his harness on that angels love to escort upward.

The pen is the tongue of the hand; a silent utterer of words for the eye.

The prouder a man is, the more he thinks he deserves, and the more he thinks he deserves, the less he really does deserve.

Work is not a curse, but drudgery is.