You are a child of the universe.

Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.

If you compare yourself to others, you may become vain and bitter; for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.

I should like, if I could, to leave a humble gift -- a bit of chaste prose that had caught up some noble moods.

Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth.

And though behind you lies a road of dust and heat and discouragement, and before you the challenge and uncertainty of untried paths, in this brief hour you are master of all highways, and the universe nestles in your soul.

Whatever else you do or forbear, impose upon yourself the task of happiness; and now and then abandon yourself to the joy of laughter. And however much you condemn the evil in the world, remember that the world is not all evil; that somewhere children are at play, as you yourself in the old days; that women still find joy in the stalwart hearts of men; And that men, treading with restless feet their many paths, may yet find refuge from the storms of the world in the cheerful house of love.