When you introduce into our schools a spirit of emulation, you have present the keenest spur admissible to the youthful intellect.

If you wish to write well, study the life about you,--life in the public streets.

Much that we call evil is really good in disguises; and we should not quarrel rashly with adversities not yet understood, nor overlook the mercies often bound up in them.

Bodies are cleansed by water; the mind is purified by truth.

It is well to think well; it is divine to act well.

Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.

Without undervaluing any other human agency, it may be safely affirmed that the Common School, improved and energized, as it can easily be, may become the most effective and benignant of all the forces of civilization. Two reasons sustain this position. In the first place, there is a universality in its operation, which can be affirmed of no other institution whatever... And, in the second place, the materials upon which it operates are so pliant and ductile as to be susceptible of assuming a greater variety of forms than any other earthly work of the Creator.