This world is not a platform where you will hear Thalberg-piano-playing. It is a piano manufactory, where are dust and shavings and boards, and saws and files and rasps and sandpapers. The perfect instrument and the music will be hereafter.

That which distinguishes man from the brute is his power, in dealing with Nature, to milk her laws, and make them give forth their bounty.

A grindstone that had not grit in it, how long would it take to sharpen an ax? And affairs that had not grit in them, how long would they take to make a man?

Your greatest pleasure is that which rebounds from hearts that you have made glad.

God has made sleep to be a sponge by which to rub out fatigue. A man's roots are planted in night as in a soil.

Grim care, moroseness, anxiety-all this rust of life ought to be scoured off by the oil of mirth. Mirth is God's medicine.

Private opinion is weak, but public opinion is almost omnipotent.