There is large difference between indolent impatience of labor and intellectual impatience of delay, large difference between leaving things unfinished because we have more to do or because we are satisfied with what we have done.

Doing is the great thing, for if people resolutely do what is right, they come in time to like doing it.

I believe that there is no test of greatness in periods, nations or men more sure than the development, among them or in them, of a noble grotesque, and no test of comparative smallness or limitation, of one kind or another, more sure than the absence of grotesque invention, or incapability of understanding it.

The noble grotesque involves the true appreciation of beauty.

To watch the corn grow, and the blossoms set; to draw hard breath over ploughshare or spade; to read, to think, to love, to hope, to pray, — these are the things that make men happy.

The history of humanity is not the history of its wars, but the history of its households.

Every great man is always being helped by everybody, for his gift is to get good out of all things and all persons.