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.

There is no music in a “rest” that I know of, but there's the making of music in it. And people are always missing that part of the life melody.

My mother's influence in molding my character was conspicuous. She forced me to learn daily long chapters of the Bible by heart. To that discipline and patient, accurate resolve I owe not only much of my general power of taking pains, but of the best part of my taste for literature.

Whenever you see want or misery or degradation in this world about you, then be sure either industry has been wanting, or industry has been in error.

The purest and most thoughtful minds are those which love colour the most.

Depend upon it, the first universal characteristic of all great art is Tenderness, as the second is Truth. I find this more and more every day: an infinitude of tenderness is the chief gift and inheritance of all the truly great men. It is sure to involve a relative intensity of disdain towards base things, and an appearance of sternness and arrogance in the eyes of all hard, stupid, and vulgar people

No good is ever done to society by the pictorial representation of its diseases.