All true work is sacred. In all true work, were it but true hand work, there is something of divineness. Labor, wide as the earth, has its summit in Heaven.

These Arabs, the man Mahomet, and that one century, - is it not as if a spark had fallen, one spark, on a world of what proves explosive powder, blazes heaven-high from Delhi to Granada! I said, the Great man was always as lightning out of Heaven; the rest of men waited for him like fuel, and then they too would flame.

The essence of humor is sensibility; warm, tender fellow-feeling with all forms of existence.

All work of man is as the swimmer's: a vast ocean threatens to devour him; if he front it not bravely, it will keep its word.

The merit of originality is not novelty; it is sincerity. The believing man is the original man; whatsoever he believes, he believes it for himself, not for another.

Universal history, the history of what man has accomplished in this world, is at bottom the History of the Great Men who have worked here.

Without kindness there can be no true joy.