The young do not know enough to be prudent, and therefore they attempt the impossible - and achieve it, generation after generation.

We should so provide for old age that it may have no urgent wants of this world to absorb it from meditation on the next. It is awful to see the lean hands of dotage making a coffer of the grave.

I do not believe there is any important difference between men and women - certainly not as much as they may be between one woman and another or one man and another.

the vicious result of privilege is that the creature who receives it becomes incapacitated by it as by a disease.

Race prejudice is not only a shadow over the colored it is a shadow over all of us, and the shadow is darkest over those who feel it least and allow its evil effects to go on.

Men would rather be starving and free than fed in bonds.

endurance of inescapable sorrow is something which has to be learned alone. And only to endure is not enough. Endurance can be a harsh and bitter root in one's life, bearing poisonous and gloomy fruit, destroying other lives. Endurance is only the beginning. There must be acceptance and the knowledge that sorrow fully accepted brings its own gifts. For there is an alchemy in sorrow. It can be transmuted into wisdom, which, if it does not bring joy, can yet bring happiness.