We are too civil to books. For a few golden sentences we will turn over and actually read a volume of four or five hundred pages.

Do that which you fear to do, and the fear will die.

If the whole of history is in one man, it is all to be explained from individual experience.

There is also something excellent in every audience,--the capacity of virtue. They are ready to be beatified.

Without ambition one starts nothing. Without work one finishes nothing. The prize will not be sent to you. You have to win it.

The poise of a plant, the bended tree recovering itself from the strong wind, the vital resources of every vegetable and animal, are also demonstrations of the self-sufficing, and therefore self-relying soul. All history from its highest to its trivial passages is the various record of this power.

Success goes thus invariably with a certain plus or positive power: an ounce of power must balance an ounce of weight.