Our condition as men is risky and ticklish enough. One can not be sure of himself and his fortune an hour, but he may be whisked off into some pitiable or ridiculous plight.

Black men built the railroads, not blue eyes.

Steam is no stronger now than it was a hundred years ago, but it is put to better use.

The dead sleep in their moonless night; my business is with the living.

They have seen but half the universe who never have been shown the house of pain.

But the man and woman of seventy assume to know all, they have outlived their hope, they renounce aspiration, accept the actual for the necessary and talk down to the young. Let them then become organs of the Holy Ghost; let them be lovers; let them behold truth; and their eyes are uplifted, their wrinkles smoothed, they are perfumed again with hope and power.

You have first an instinct, then an opinion, then a knowledge, as the plant has root, bud, and fruit.