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.

Of all the things that oppress me, this sense of the evil working of nature herself -my disgust at her barbarity -clumsiness -darkness -bitter mockery of herself -is the most desolating.

The common practice of keeping up appearances with society is a mere selfish struggle of the vain with the vain.

At every moment of our lives we should be trying to find out, not in what we differ with other people, but in what we agree with them.

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

So far as I have myself observed, the distinctive character of a child is to live always in the tangible present.

When men do not love their hearth, nor reverence their thresholds, it is a sign that they have dishonoured both ... Our God is a house-hold God, as well as a heavenly one; He has an altar in every man's dwelling.