The secret of fortune is joy in our hands. Welcome evermore to gods and men is the self-helping man. For him all doors are flung wide. Him all tongues greet, all honors crown, all eyes follow with desire. Our love goes out to him and embraces him because he did not need it.

We write from aspiration and antagonism, as well as from experience. We paint those qualities which we do not posses.

Spoons and skimmers you can be undistinguishably together; but vases and statues require each a pedestal for itself.

Slavery is no scholar, no improver; it does not love the whistle of the railroad; it does not love the newspaper, the mailbag, a college, a book or a preacher who has the absurd whim of saying what he thinks; it does not increase the white population; it does not improve the soil; everything goes to decay.

The first lesson of history is that evil is good.

Nothing is quite beautiful alone; nothing but is beautiful in the whole. A single object is only so far beautiful as it suggests this universal grace.

Of cheerfulness, or a good temper - the more it is spent, the more of it remains.