Action is the process whereby what is not fully formed passes into expressive consciousness.

Discontent is want of self-reliance; it is infirmity of will.

Prayer as a means to effect a private end is theft and meanness.

Others can get in your way temporarily, but only you can get out of your way permanently. Our best thoughts come from others.

That which we persist in doing becomes easier to do, not that the nature of the thing has changed but that our power to do has increased.

I confess myself utterly at a loss in suggesting particular reforms in our ways of teaching. No discretion that can be lodged with a school-committee, with the overseers or visitors of an academy, of a college, can at all avail to reach these difficulties and perplexities, but they solve themselves when we leave institutions and address individuals.

Let the realist not mind appearances. Let him delegate to others the costly courtesies and decorations of social life. The virtuesare economists, but some of the vices are also. Thus, next to humility, I have noticed that pride is a pretty good husband. A good pride is, as I reckon it, worth from five hundred to fifteen hundred a year.