When our cup runs over, we let others drink the drops that fall, but not a drop from within the rim, and call it charity; when the crumbs are swept from our table, we think it generous to let the dogs eat them; as if that were charity which permits others to have what we cannot keep.

To the great tree-loving fraternity we belong. We love trees with universal and unfeigned love, and all things that do grow under them or around them - the whole leaf and root tribe. Not alone when they are in their glory, but in whatever state they are - in leaf, or rimed with frost, or powdered with snow, or crystal-sheathed in ice, or in severe outline stripped and bare against a November sky - we love them.

Morality is good, and is accepted of God, as far as it goes; but the difficulty is, it does not go far enough.

No coffee can be good in the mouth that does not first send a sweet offering of odor to the nostrils.

Children are the hands by which we take hold of heaven. By these tendrils we clasp it and climb thitherward. And why do we think that we are separated from them? We never half knew them, nor in this world could.

Education will not come of itself; it will never come unless you seek it; it will not come unless you take the first steps which lead to it; but, taking these steps, every man can acquire it.

It is defeat that turns bone to flint, gristle to muscle, and makes men invincible.