Cheerfulness is as natural to the heart of a man in strong health as color to his cheek; and wherever there is habitual gloom there must be either bad air, unwholesome food, improperly severe labor, or erring habits of life.

You should read books like you take medicine, by advice, and not by advertisement.

As long as there are cold and nakedness in the land around you, so long can there be no question at all but that splendor of dress is a crime. In due time, when we have nothing better to set people to work at, it may be right to let them make lace and cut jewels; but as long as there are any who have no blankets for their beds, and no rags for their bodies, so long it is blanket-making and tailoring we must set people to work at, not lace.

Nature is painting for us, day after day, pictures of infinite beauty.

Commerce is the agency by which the power of choice is obtained.

The art of nations is to be accumulative, just as science and history are; the work of living men not superseding, but building itself upon the work of the past.

Not only is there but one way of doing things rightly, but there is only one way of seeing them, and that is, seeing the whole of them.