A man's usefulness depends on his living up to his ideals insofar as he can. It is hard to fail but it is worse never to have tried to succeed. All daring and courage, all iron endurance of misfortune, make for a finer, nobler type of manhood. Only those are fit to live who do not fear to die; and none are fit to die who have shrunk from the joy of life and the duty of life.

Comparison is the thief of joy.

The president is that invisible force that makes a school of fish suddenly change direction, so that everyone 'ohhs' and 'ahhs' at the glimmering mass and only later wonders what makes them move in that way. I read somewhere-_Harper's_, I'm fairly certain-that the fish are only avoiding pockets of extra cold water.

My power vanishes into thin air the instant that my fellow citizens, who are straight and honest, cease to believe that I represent them and fight for what is straight and honest. That is all the strength that I have.

Just as you believe you may have already halfway there

War with evil; but show no spirit of malignity toward the man who may be responsible for the evil. Put it out of his power to do wrong.

He [Lincoln] had mastered it {the Bible] absolutely...mastered it so that he became almost 'a man of one Book', who knew that Book and who instinctively put into practice what he had been taught therein.