It is by work that man carves his way to that measure of power which will fit him for his destiny.

Music was a thing of the soul — a rose-lipped shell that murmured of the eternal sea — a strange bird singing the songs of another shore.

Why will you be always sallying out to break lances with other people's wind-mills, when your own is not capable of grinding corn for the horse you ride?

Almost everywhere men have become the particular things which their particular work has made them.

Poet, forger of ideals, dreamer among the possibilities of life, prophet of the millenium, do you get impatient with the prosaic life around you -- the dulness, and the earthliness, and the brutishness of men? Fret not. Go forward into the realm which stretches before you; climb the highest mountain you can reach, and plant a cross there. The nations will come up to it some day. Work for immortality if you will; then wait for it. If your own age fail to recognize you, a coming age will not.

It is not a question how much a man knows, but what use he can make of what he knows.

if have got my spindle and my distaff ready--my pen and mind--never doubting for an instant that God will send me flax.