When God shuts a door, He opens a window.

The question is not what man can scorn, or disparage, or find fault with, but what he can love, and value, and appreciate.

Like other beautiful things in this world, its end (that of a shaft) is to be beautiful; and, in proportion to its beauty, it receives permission to be otherwise useless. We do not blame emeralds and rubies because we cannot make them into heads of hammers.

No individual rain drop ever considers itself responsible for the flood.

It does not matter what the whip is; it is none the less a whip, because you have cut thongs for it out of your own souls.

The greatest reward is not what we receive for our labor, but what we become by it.

The plea of ignorance will never take away our responsibilities.