We should live and labor in our time that what came to us as a seed may go to the next generation as blossom, and what came to us as blossom, may go to them as fruit. This is what we mean by progress.

They who refuse education to a black man would turn the South into a vast poorhouse, and labor into a pendulum, necessity vibrating between poverty and indolence.

It is one of the worst effects of prosperity to make a man a vortex instead of a fountain; so that, instead of throwing out, he learns only to draw in.

You are not called to be a canary in a cage. You are called to be an eagle, and to fly sun to sun, over continents.

Work is not a curse, but drudgery is.

Scepticism is a barren coast, without a harbor or lighthouse.

That was a judicious mother who said, "I obey my children for the first year of their lives, but ever after I expect them to obey me.