Our daughters are the most precious of our treasures, the dearest possessions of our homes and the objects of our most watchful love.

On the day long after childhood when I suddenly heard of his death, the sky grew dark above my head. I was walking on a Southern highway, and a friend driving in a pony carriage passed me, stopped and said, "Have you heard that Charles Dickens is dead?" It was as if I had been robbed of one of my dearest friends.

Love turns all the wheels of human industry, is the motive power under the world's machinery, makes worthwhile every enterprise on the earth, is coequal with life, outlasts death, and reaches onward into heaven.

Self-complacen cy is fatal to progress.

Creative genius is a divinely bestowed gift which is the coronation of the few.

Books have been to me what gold is to the miser, what new fields are to the explorer.

I would not, if I could, give up the memory of the joy I have had in books for any advantage that could be offered in other pursuits or occupations. Books have been to me what gold is to the miser, what new fields are to the explorer.