If men lived like men indeed, their houses would be temples -- temples which we should hardly dare to injure, and in which it would make us holy to be permitted to live; and there must be a strange dissolution of natural affection, a strange unthankfulness for all that homes have given and parents taught, a strange consciousness that we have been unfaithful to our fathers honor, or that our own lives are not such as would make our dwellings sacred to our children, when each man would fain build to himself, and build for the little revolution of his own life only.

The strength and power of a country depends absolutely on the quantity of good men and women in it.

There is rough work to be done, and rough men must do it; there is gentle work to be done, and gentlemen must do it.

Failure is less attributable to either insufficiency of means or impatience of labours than to a confused understanding of the thing actually to be done.

In great countries, children are always trying to remain children, and the parents want to make them into adults. In vile countries, the children are always wanting to be adults and the parents want to keep them children.

If you want knowledge, you must toil for it; if food, you must toil for it; and if pleasure, you must toil for it: toil is the law.

All great song, from the first day when human lips contrived syllables, has been sincere song.