Better the rudest work that tells a story or records a fact, than the richest without meaning.

In every person who comes near you look for what is good and strong.

If the thing is impossible, you need not trouble yourselves about it; if possible, try for it.

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.

Along the iron veins that traverse the frame of our country, beat and flow the fiery pulses of its exertion, hotter and faster every hour. All vitality is concentrated through those throbbing arteries into the central cities; the country is passed over like a green sea by narrow bridges, and we are thrown back in continually closer crowds on the city gates.

Endurance is nobler than strength, and patience than beauty.

Everything that you can see in the world around you presents itself to your eyes only as an arrangement of patches of different colors.