There is a crack in everything God has made

There is no way to success in art but to take off your coat, grind paint, and work like a digger on the railroad, all day and every day.

The people fancy they hate poetry, and they are all poets and mystics.

The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks.

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.

The common experience is, that the man fits himself as well as he can to the customary details of that work or trade he falls into, and tends it as a dog turns a spit. Then he is part of the machine he moves; the man is lost.

A chief event of life is the day in which we have encountered a mind that startled us.