He is a good man, who can receive a gift well. We are either glad or sorry at a gift, and both emotions are unbecoming.

We learn that God IS; that he is in me; and that all things are shadows of him.

Men cease to interest us when we find their limitations. The only sin is limitation. As soon as you once come up with a man's limitations, it is all over with him.

To the young mind every thing is individual, stands by itself. By and by, it finds how to join two things and see in them one nature; then three, then three thousand; and so, tyrannized over by its own unifying instinct, it goes on tying things together, diminishing anomalies, discovering roots running under ground whereby contrary and remote things cohere and flower out from one stem.

But there are higher secrets of culture, which are not for the apprentices, but for proficients. These are lessons only for the brave. We must know our friends under ugly masks. The calamities are our friends.

Vigor is contagious, and whatever makes us either think or feel strongly adds to our power and enlarges our field of action.

Make yourself necessary to the world, and mankind will give you bread.