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.

Great men are rarely isolated mountain-peaks; they are the summits of ranges.

The coarsest father gains a new impulse to labor from the moment of his baby's birth; he scarcely sees it when awake, and yet it is with him all the time. Every stroke he strikes is for his child. New social aims, new moral motives, come vaguely up to him.

In our methodical American life, we still recognize some magic in summer. Most persons at least resign themselves to being decently happy in June. They accept June. They compliment its weather. They complain of the earlier months as cold, and so spend them in the city; and they complain of the later months as hot, and so refrigerate themselves on some barren sea-coast. God offers us yearly a necklace of twelve pearls; most men choose the fairest, label it June, and cast the rest away.

Originality is simply a pair of fresh eyes.

Many persons sigh for death when it seems far off, but the inclination vanishes when the boat upsets, or the locomotive runs off the track, or the measles set it.

There is certainly no defence or water -proof garment against adverse fortune which is, on the whole, so effectual as an habitual sense of humor.