The most fertile soil does not necessarily produce the most abundant harvest. It is the use we make of our faculties which renders them valuable.
Thomas Wentworth HigginsonCharacter shows itself apart from genius as a special thing. The first point of measurement of any man is that of quality.
Thomas Wentworth HigginsonHow much that the world calls selfishness is only generosity with narrow walls,--a too exclusive solicitude to maintain a wife in luxury, or make one's children rich.
Thomas Wentworth HigginsonNothing can hide from me the conviction that an immortal soul needs for its sustenance something more than visiting, and gardening, and novel-reading, and crochet-needle, and the occasional manufacture of sponge cake.
Thomas Wentworth HigginsonAll... religions show the same disparity between belief and practice, and each is safe till it tries to exclude the rest. Test each sect by its best or its worst as you will, by its high-water mark of virtue or its low-water mark of vice. But falsehood begins when you measure the ebb of any other religion against the flood-tide of your own. There is a noble and a base side to every history.
Thomas Wentworth HigginsonThe Englishman's strong point is his vigorous insularity; that of the American his power of adaptation. Each of these attitudes has its perils. The Englishman stands firmly on his feet, but he who merely does this never advances. The American's disposition is to step forward even at the risk of a fall.
Thomas Wentworth Higginson