October is the opal month of the year. It is the month of glory, of ripeness. It is the picture-month.

The elect, those who will; the non-elect, those who won't.

Self-denial does not belong to religion as characteristic of it; it belongs to human life; the lower nature must always be denied when you are trying to rise to a higher sphere.

Only have enough of little virtues and common fidelities, and you need not mourn because you are neither a hero nor a saint.

A cunning man overreaches no one half as much as himself.

The slave labors, but with no cheer - it is not the road to respectability, it will honor him with no citizens' trust, it brings no bread to his family, no grain to his garner, no leisure in after-days, no books or papers to his children. It opens no school-house door, builds no church, rears for him no factory, lays no keel, fills no bank, earns no acres. With sweat and toil and ignorance he consumes his life, to pour the earnings into channels from which he does no drink, into hands that never honor him. But perpetually rob and often torment.

The diameter of each day is measured by the stretch of thought - not by the rising and setting of the sun.