Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anybody expects of you. Never excuse yourself.

Boys have their soft and gentle moods too. You would suppose by the morning racket that nothing could be more foreign to their nature than romance and vague sadness. . . . But boys have hours of great sinking and sadness, when kindness and fondness are peculiarly needful to them.

The one great poem of New England is her Sunday.

Affliction comes to us all ...not to impoverish, but to enrich us, as the plough enriches the field; to multiply our joy, as the seed, by planting, is multiplied a thousand-fold.

Nothing can compare in beauty, and wonder, and admirableness, and divinity itself, to the silent work in obscure dwellings of faithful women bringing their children to honor and virtue and piety.

Riches without law are more dangerous than is poverty without law

God puts the excess of hope in one man, in order that it may be a medicine to the man who is despondent.