Labor is the fabled magician's wand, the philosophers stone, and the cap of good fortune.

My mother was kept very busy with her sewing; sometimes she would have another woman helping her.

It is strange how in some things honest people can be dishonest without the slightest compunction.

Make yourself as happy as possible, and try to make those happy whose lives come in touch with yours. But to attempt to right the wrongs and cease the sufferings of the world in general is a waste of effort.

It’s no disgrace to be black, but it’s often very inconvenient.

Nothing great or enduring, especially in music, has ever sprung full-fledged and unprecedented from the brain of any master; the best he gives to the world he gathers from the hearts of the people, and runs it through the alembic of his genius.

I finally made up my mind that I would neither disclaim the black race nor claim the white race; but that I would change my name, raise a mustache, and let the world take me for what it would; that it was not necessary for me to go about with a label of inferiority pasted across my forehead.