It is the greatest of all mistakes to begin life with the expectation that it is going to be easy, or with the wish to have it so.

Those who plant trees plant hope.

He who plants a tree, plants a hope.

I regard a love for poetry as one of the most needful and helpful elements in the life-outfit of a human being. It was the greatest of blessings to me, in the long days of toil to which I was shut in much earlier than most young girls are, that the poetry I held in my memory breathed its enchanted atmosphere through me and around me, and touched even dull drudgery with its sunshine.

Rich or poor, every child comes into the world with some imperative need of its own, which shapes its individuality.

The curse of covetousness is that it destroys manhood by substituting money for character.

Some of us must wait for the best human gifts until we come to heavenly places. Our natural desire for musical utterance is perhaps a prophecy that in a perfect world we shall all know how to sing.