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

No one can feel more gratefully the charm of noble scenery, or the refreshment of escape into the unspoiled solitudes of nature, than the laborer at some close in-door employment.

Our relatives form the natural setting of our childhood. We understand ourselves best and are best understood by others through the persons who came nearest to us in our earliest years.

If the world 's a vale of tears, Smile, till rainbows span it!

A man may make a misanthrope of himself, but he is never one by nature.

I learned what education really is: the penetrating deeper and rising higher into life, as well as making continually wider explorations; the rounding of the whole human being out of its nebulous elements into form, as planets and suns are rounded, until they give out safe and steady light. This makes the process a infinite one, not possible to be completed at any school.

There is something in the place where we were born that holds us always by the heart-strings.