You have come into a hard world. I know of only one easy place in it, and that is the grave.

In engineering, that only is great which achieves. It matters not what the intention is, he who in the day of battle is not victorious is not saved by his intention.

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.

I pray on the principle that wine knocks the cork out of a bottle. There is an inward fermentation, and there must be a vent.

The cynic puts all human actions into two classes - openly bad and secretly bad.

“I can forgive, but I cannot forget,” is only another way of saying, “I will not forgive.”

When our children die, we drop them into the unknown, shuddering with fear. We know that they go out from us, and we stand, and pity, and wonder.