it is always easier to see the beginning from the end, than the end from the beginning.

Bustle, Sophronia, is not industry, as you very well know; people flutter and bustle about like a hen raising ducks, and then complain that their work has killed them, when it was the fuss that was the killing cause.

What is true of the individual will be true of the whole family; what is true of the family will be true of the community, and of the state.

... there can be no real beauty without neatness and order.

little every-day courtesies are called the small change of life; but we should be badly off in trade if we had no small change, and must always deal with twenty-dollar bills; while the small change mounts up to the great sum in a lifetime.

What! nothing grand and noble to be admired, obeyed, copied? Ah, the lack is not without you, but within you!

If people could only be taught that economy is a thing of littles and of individuals, and of every day, and not a thing of masses and of spasmodic efforts, then a true idea would begin to tell upon the habits of our domestic life, for the thrift and thriving of the individual is the thrift and thriving of the nation.