The idle man stands outside of God's plan, outside of the ordained scheme of things; and the truest self-respect, the noblest independence, and the most genuine dignity, are not to be found there.

A fit of anger is as fatal to dignity as a dose of arsenic is to life.

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.

The soul, like the body, lives by what it feeds on.

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

A fortune won in a day is lost in a day; a fortune won slowly, and slowly compacted, seems to acquire from the hand that won it the property of endurance.

Every man who strikes blows for power, for influence, for institutions, for the right, must be just as good an anvil as he is a hammer.